Paulo Loeb and Fernand Alphen are in charge of the company, which started with the site Fulano.com; today offers several services
Since the beginning of its history, Fbiz has sought to embrace the complexity and overcome the challenges that the advertising market presented. This Thursday (13), the agency, defined by a complex environment by CEOs Paulo Loeb and Fernand Alphen, completes 24 years of history, being considered one of the most admired agencies, according to Agency Scope 2022/2023, carried out by Scopen.
In celebration of yet another anniversary, Loeb fondly recalls the history of Fbiz, its main challenges over the years and tells plans for the future.
Fbiz was born in 1999 with Fulano.com, a question and answer website, aimed at entertainment, in which people earned points for their participation and were able to exchange the points for prizes – a novelty that made it one of the most visited websites in Brazil.
Part of 70% of Fulano.com’s income came from ads for startups that, about a year later, had to remove their ads due to what Loeb defines as the bursting of the internet bubble. Thus, Fulano.com lost a significant part of its profits.
Seeking to reverse the scenario, he offered a proposal to his former company, Unilever: Since Fulano would not survive on the media of other startups, we created Fulano Business, which aimed to create websites for other companies. If startups invested in media in Fulano, why couldn’t big companies like Unilever also invest?, questioned the CEO.
Fulano Business, which soon became known as Fbiz, became a website producer for these companies and, with its services, consolidated itself as one of the main digital agencies in Brazil. The name agency does not necessarily explain what we do at Fbiz, since over the years we have specialized in different services, he points out.
Challenges
By incorporating new services into Fbiz, such as buying media, the e-commerce area, mobile and others, the agency was faced with the possibility of working with very complex environments. Complexity and its resolution have been an agenda since the birth of Fbiz. When I talk about complexity, I mean learning and creating strategies from scratch, explains the executive.
