President of Clube de Criação, Joana Mendes also talks about the festival, held last weekend, the first under her management
Held at the Memorial da América Latina, in So Paulo, the 10th edition of the Clube de Criação Festival was Chapa Preta’s first in command of the entity, under the presidency of the editor Joana Mendes. According to her, after a year of management, the project was remodeled with attention to the team and a change of headquarters. More comfortable and cheaper. It also brought the diversity agenda beyond the boxes that are imposed. Joana adds: That people of color and other minority groups should not only discuss diversity, but a diverse range of issues.
Intersectionality is Joana’s expression to show that black people have a voice not only in terms of ethnicity and identity. But they are capable of meeting the demands of society, such as advertising itself, which requires multidisciplinary knowledge.
When I take on a technology client, I need to advance my knowledge of the topic and so on. It is not for another reason that the festival’s debate agenda had the intersectionality so that diversity was not the central focus of all speeches. The best advertisers are the ones who talk about intersections; other subjects show that we wear a lot of hats. If we only talk about advertising, we end up not talking as we should. In other words, our conversations never leave the surface, says Joana, who shared one of the debates with Argentine Pablo del Campo, former global CCO of the Saatchi & Saatchi chain, who spent two years out of advertising.
Another attraction of the festival that corroborates the search for intersection was the presence of Craig Barron, creative director of Magnopus, in Los Angeles, winner of the Oscar for special effects for his work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Kat Friis, who won an Emmy for R/GA New York’s Love has on the label campaign for the Ad Council, was also in attendance.
The president of Clube de Criação clarifies that there are two events: one of them comprises the official agenda, but the behind-the-scenes conversations are also, in her words, inspiring. According to Joana, the hunger for face-to-face meetings and conversations that don’t talk so much about the market. Although she attests that there is something that needs attention after the pandemic that, right at the beginning, had the death of George Floyd, in the United States.
This fact drew the attention of the agencies and also the brands to the question of the presence of black professionals in the structures. There was an increase in hiring from then on. But now I realize that the promotion of blacks to management positions is ending, that there has been a setback in the search for black talent in the agencies. It is an issue that the Club is very attentive to, says Joana, who has worked at Artplan Rio, R/GA, FCB, Thompson and VMLY&R, but currently has no branch.
According to her, parallel advertising activities bring other opportunities. I’m writing a series of fiction and I’ve launched the book ‘Manual of hairstyles for black people’, from the Companhia das Letrinhas portfolio, he adds.
Reunion, recovery, diversity and the 2022 edition of the Yearbook are on the agenda of the renewed Clube de Criação. The Yearbook will have the participation of art directors Bruno Opido (Plant), Douglas Reis (DPZ), Roma Joana (AlmapBBDO) and Vanessa Ferreira (Estdio Preta Ilustra). The approach includes collaborative processes. Still no date set for release, but with the expectation for the end of 2022, to have a printed and digital version.
about things built by hand; pottery shop with an art narrative, says Joana, remembering that Clube de Criação, founded 47 years ago, has the premise of fostering creativity and acting as a guardian for the future, while looking at the past and the present. We always need to interact with other actors in the creative economy, as happened at the festival, she says.
