Chapter 1: Lost & Forgottens
Launch Lessons
When we realized the absence of a method that could carry out the reconnection of a brand to its values and essence, we decided to give up our cases and careers in the great agencies of the advertising market to design this method to found an office that had our beliefs.
It was 16 years dedicated to the communication industry, working in large agencies and for large advertisers as creative and planning directors. But there was something inside us that would lead us to take other directions to go after what we really believed in as communicators.
We didn't have a ready map that would show us the best path to all the answers we were looking for, but one thing we had no doubts about: it would be necessary to lose ourselves from everything we believed in as advertisers in order to find ourselves again. We were entering our 30s, and the need to identify with our values and create a working model that we believed in was fundamental in this process of letting go of everything to live a new experience. Undoubtedly, New York is this great port of self-rediscovery.
New York, USA
Finding the Life+Style
“Visiting the biggest hotel chains in the city, we realized that there was a different experience in each of those environments. Unlike what happens in Brazil or Latin America, hotel chains functioned as true meeting points for different tribes and styles. The lobbies were disputed by centimeters and being able to fit in with some of these tribes was an even more impossible mission.”
“Each detail worked as a true communication combustion. Only there we understood and experienced what a 360º communication was. From the hostess, to the architecture, to the people who attended, to the interior design, to the invitation folders, to the curatorship of brands, from the music that played in the environments and in the lobby, to the products sold in the hotel's shops, everything was perfectly connected. But it wasn't a simple "360º communication", it was more than that, it was a lifestyle that penetrated our skin as strongly as the fragrance that existed in each of the places we visited. In all of them, the rule was clear : either you identify and are in, or you do not identify and get out.”
Realizing this effervescence that is so natural for hotel brands, Flávia and Victor dedicated themselves to transporting this same method to any type of product. They looked at maps and more maps in order to build a methodology that would transform brands into people, that is, into true lifestyles. As in the hotel chains, they were looking for a method where it was possible for any product or service to have their musical taste, smell, taste, their favorite brands and, why not, their own home?
As eternal fashion students, Nogueira was born into a family of fashion creatives and had already taken several courses in the area, such as at the Fashion Institute of Technology. And Hayashida who worked on many fashion editorials for magazines in Brazil and studied in courses at Faculdade Santa Marcelina, both understood that they should anchor their method in the same pillars of their essences. That is, understanding, first, the essence of a brand from its founders and, then, through a study of trends and behavior research, finding the attitude and positioning to be adopted in absolutely all points of contact.
We had to draw, write, cut and paste everything we were seeing in those hotels. We rented a space on MeatPacking to work. It was not an easy period, as there was a huge internal demand on our part for having left everything in Brazil and we were in a totally different environment, where the hunger for the new happens second by second.
On the way back, every night, we'd stop at a diner in Brooklyn to eat hot dog and listen to a guy with his boom box. We realized that he was a well-known person, had participated in a video clip of The Killers and participated in a program like The Voicer called Apollo. Hearing this boy's stories every night encouraged us, because like us, he had also left everything to go back to being who he was, a street singer. This was an essence he never wanted to lose, for any money. This brought us, in addition to a life lesson, the main pillar of our method: which is to never forget our essence.
Understanding the Essence