This month I received two books published by advertisers. The first was the monumental autobiography of Jens Olesen, former director of McCann in Brazil, and probably the biggest autobiography ever published in the world: it weighs 5 kilos.
With thousands of photographs and well-prepared texts, the book, entitled What a Life, really shows a life intensely lived, in various moments, environments, meetings, ceremonies, work meetings.
Everything is a reason to show how he lived: invitations, business cards, medals, banners, room decorations — he certainly had, or still has, one of the most efficient secretaries in the world, in filing and organizing small souvenirs.
The title What a life says it all. Jens Olesen’s life (thankfully he’s still alive) is one of the most interesting, made possible by his chosen profession.
The other book, fun, but also based on small episodes from the life of an advertiser, is Te contai esse?, by Gilberto Leifert, one of the people who had the greatest importance in the historical professional period in which we live.
Gilberto was president of Conar, at Abert, Globo’s director in the relationship with agencies.
He also registered, with a delicious text, the small episodes he lived, discovering the humor that exists in our everyday life. Among hundreds of small cases, I cite two as examples: the cousin who went to eat a brigadeiro in a sweet shop in the city and discovered a tooth inside the candy and made a proper scandal and only when she got home did she notice that the tooth was her implant; another, the neighbor in the garage who admires the new car that has arrived and comments to Gilberto, not knowing he owned the car, “Who’s the son of a bitch neighbor who has the money to buy a car like that?”
I refer to these two books to answer Paulo Macedo’s question: how has the profession influenced your life?
The privilege of working in advertising from the 1950s until now — and of having a job.
Now that I’m living the last hours of my life, I have a better perspective of those days, in the midst of political, economic, social upheavals, armed confrontations and nuclear threats, terrible pandemics… and still being alive.
We were lucky to be in a world that was changing fast, and that knew the revolution that the satellites brought about, in a world that knew the world connection in its own hands.
I remember when I came back from the United States and brought the first iPhone to Brazil; in the same week, at a conference in Aracaju, I showed it to 300 young people, “This device will change your lives”, I told them.
I didn’t imagine that time went by so quickly and the changes took place so completely.
Having lived with the creators of their companies, with interesting clients, with professors and intellectuals, with colleagues who knew how to tell stories, write verbal titles, plan with talent, enrich our lives.
Having known a democratic country, a military dictatorship, censorship, a return to democracy.
The books we read, the courses we took, the trips, the congresses we participated in, the cities we got to know, the rivers of my land.
Curious that the memory of the last days (and probably the last minutes), only refers to the good things of this phenomenon that we cannot understand, life.
We are all Jens Olesen and Gilbertos Leifert in this period of humanity.
Last week, my brother at the Academia Paulista de Letras, the architect Rui Ohtake, author of more than 300 important works, died.
His last words were “What a beauty”.
I make your words my own.
Roberto Duailibi is an advertiser, writer and foundedr from DPZ, today DPZ&T
