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Now that Dentsu Group’s integrated leadership structure and its amalgamation of its global agency brands into a single Dentsu Creative entity has solidified, the agency has put another piece of the puzzle into place with Paulo Fogaca being named U.S. CEO.
Fogaca’s immediate remit as U.S. CEO is to solidify Dentsu Creative’s vision, strategy and positioning for the U.S., and boost growth for the network and its clients. His first task is to embed with agency teams and brand leaders to learn more about the most pressing business imperatives at Dentsu.
Fogaca will report to Fred Levron, Dentsu global chief creative officer, and Dentsu Americas CEO and chief global client officer Jacki Kelley.
“Paulo Fogaca is a rare builder with vision who only brings the best of both worlds—operational efficiency and creative excellence—to the table. I’m beyond energized he’s joining us as Dentsu Creative CEO for the U.S.,” said Levron in a statement. “Paulo’s relentless appetite and entrepreneurial spirit to grow individuals and businesses is just what we need to reinvent creativity.”
Fogaca was most recently global COO and partner at Gut, which recently brought in Andrea Diquez from DDB Chicago as CEO. At Gut, Fogaca was responsible for running global agency operations across the agency’s five offices in Miami, Toronto, Mexico, São Paulo and Buenos Aires. Before that, Fogaca was a lead architect and global COO of David, overseeing offices in Miami, Buenos Aires and São Paulo.
Prior to David, Fogaca spent seven years at Ogilvy, rising to senior partner, managing director, working on the Coca-Cola brands. He has also held positions at Euro RSCG (now Havas), AmBev and Linea Alimentos in Sao Paulo. He has worked on groundbreaking campaigns over his 25-plus-year career, including “Google Home of the Whopper,” “Wiener Stampede” and Budweiser’s Super Bowl efforts to uplift communities in need. He has also made the Adweek 50 and Adweek’s Young Influentials lists.
Fogaca joins a regional team that includes Abbey Klaassen, president of Dentsu Creative’s New York hub, Laurel Flatt, president of the Chicago hub, Pedro Perez, CCO of Chicago and Rafael Rizuto, CCO for the U.S. and Hispanic LATAM. Fogaca fills the post left by Jon Dupuis who was elevated to a global clients president role in October. The core U.S. group will work with the new global clients group, including global chief clients creative officer Julie Scelzo.
Seeing a need for integration
Fogaca said he chose to sign with Dentsu because of the team he will be working with and the way the organization is now structured.
“When you think about the breadth of capabilities that this group has in the markets, and with a good precedent of doing great work on CX, on media and on creative, it’s really interesting to see the combination of those three things,” Fogaca told Adweek.
Fogaca stressed how real transformation comes from collective efforts, not individual actions, and he favors “radical collaboration” and integration, with ideas coming from everyone from the creatives to the producers, communications and account people.
“My joy comes from intentionally bringing together all the pieces—talent, technologies and cultural fluency—to solve complex business problems through creativity … and I get to do it with peers who wow me: Abbey, Laurel, Pedro and Rafa,” said Fogaca.
He also had plenty of praise for Levron as a “creative genius” and for Kelley as a leader.
“She makes space for you to develop, she gives you the opportunity for you to do your best. It’s what I believe as a leader that I should be doing essentially—removing every obstacle, creating the platform for people to shine. To nurture people to do their best work,” said Fogaca.
Nurturing and retaining talent
Nurturing talent is something that Fogaca has done over the course of his career and he intends to do the same at Dentsu Creative.
Fogaca said he loves pulling a team together, as he did when he first helped to open David and had to build a team from scratch. At Dentsu, many of the pieces are already in place, so Fogaca sees great importance in retaining the talent that is there and hiring to fill in the gaps.
“People who are giving their best will be rewarded and they will stay with us. Retention is essentially having a very clear vision of what kind of talent I have in the organization, knowing what they need to continued giving him that path,” said Fogaca.
Dentsu has an internal shadow board that allows people at any level, including junior and mid-level employees, to give their feedback on executive issues and have a say in what goes on in the company, which keeps employees engaged and interested in working their way up in the company.
While Fogaca is still in his first few days at Dentsu Creative, he looks forward to scaling up globally with the agency and working with clients including Oreo, American Express, Subway, among others, while also getting his second MBA in creative leadership, which he states will allow him to “lead people to their best selves, their best work and to the best results.”
