Shorts
"Short stories on the world of ideas and creativity written on my BlackBerry® @ 30,000 ft. above the ground."
by Juan Carlos Ortiz
Copyright 2010 Juan Carlos Ortiz
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Published by Juan Carlos Ortiz at Smashwords
My life has passed between two great and marvelous companies: Leo Burnett and DDB. And today I can confirm with all certainty that for me, the most important company has been my family. Therefore, I dedicate this book to my wife Catalina, for being my inspiration, and to my children Matias and Eloisa for being the reason for my existence, to my parents Alejandro and Gretta for being my guides, and to all my family for supporting me. Without your company I would never have become what I am.
Thank you.
JCO
IN A FEW WORDS
Juan Carlos Ortiz was the first Latin American to become president of an advertising agency in the United States when leading Leo Burnett USA, moved to DDB Worldwide with the project of joining the Latin culture, its creativity, passion and work in order to cross borders and achieve one single idea: the Latin influence. This way, Juan Carlos was the first agency leader in the world to put together all the world’s Latin markets - Latin America, Spain and USA – thus creating DDB Latina.
Winner of the first Film Gold Lion at Cannes Festival in Colombian history with a campaign for the government program against drugs, Ortiz collects several awards in advertising competitions all over the world. In 2008 he was the president of the jury at FIAP – Iberian-American Advertising Festival, in 2009 was a member of the Global Effie Awards, and represented the Latin region at the prestigious Titanium & Integrated Lions jury at Cannes Festival.
An inductee of AAF’s Advertising Hall of Achievement (American Advertising Federation), the World Economic Forum announced Ortiz as a Young Global Leader for his professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world. Last year he was inducted into the very first “Salon de La Fama” (Hall of Fame) of FIAP, as one of the legends of Iberian American advertising, considered model and inspiration for the region’s market and new generations.
We at Davivienda Bank in Colombia, have had the privilege for many years of the advice, direction, and above all the friendship of Juan Carlos Ortiz. This has been ongoing since he participated in the management of our campaigns and image, while at Leo Burnett.
Juan Carlos is a source of pride for Colombia because of his talent, his nature which is always friendly, warm, creative, and owns a vision that makes a great professional, but above all a great person and a great friend.
Davivienda is a great institution, an extraordinary brand and great presence and acceptance in the minds of Colombian families, attributed to friendly language, and a long-term communication strategy. Over 20 years, Juan Carlos had been fundamental in the construction of this precious value. Through team work, honesty, thoughtfulness and support in the study and research of markets and the technology community, his greatest virtue has been leadership that allows him to direct his teams and the bank’s, capturing a larger potential and tapping the ingenuity of its members, because he combines this quality with what is fundamental, the vision.
I am pleased to be a part of this publication.
Efraín Forero Fonseca
President
Banco Davivienda S.A
~*~
Undoubtedly Juan Carlos is one of our young leaders in the Omnicom Group. His creative talent has a great reputation and what better example of this than in this collection called SHORTS written on his BlackBerry® ® and while traveling on airplanes. I recommend them.
John Wren
CEO Omnicom Group
~*~
These highly entertaining “SHORTS” are more than just fresh ideas with a human touch. With commendable clarity, Juan Carlos conveys the breadth of his experience and vision, his wonderful sense of humour and keen perceptiveness. Here is a book of captivating anecdotes written with simplicity and intelligence…to be savoured slowly, like a fine bottle of wine.
Maurice Lévy
Chairman and CEO
Publicis Groupe
~*~
This book is a great collection of stories and ideas that come together like a good movie. Juan Carlos has lived a rich life and his experiences are something for everyone to enjoy.
Chuck Brymer
President and CEO
DDB Worldwide
~*~
Passionate. Energetic. Brilliant. Inspiring.
That’s how I would describe Juan Carlos Ortiz as a person and as a business leader. His enthusiasm for creativity in all its forms, for business and for life in general is contagious. A conversation with Juan Carlos leaves you with a palpable sense of optimism and hope for the future. He is one of the finest young leaders in our company and in our industry. The future of the communications industry rests in the hands of young visionaries like Juan Carlos Ortiz.
Bob Scarpelli
Chairman and Chief Creative Officer
DDB Worldwide
~*~
Juan Carlos’ stories are wonderful insights into the creative mind and the business of ideas. Each of his stories are filled with authenticity and heart - two wonderful attributes of this wonderful man. “SHORTS” is truly a new-world book because he wrote it entirely on his BlackBerry® ® and always on airplanes. I commend this collection and encourage those who embrace creativity to read it and be inspired by it.
Tom Bernardin
Chairman and CEO
Leo Burnett Worldwide
~*~
Juan Carlos is a friend that I see as a passionate, talented, relentlessly determined creative professional, always striving for higher standards of excellence. We began working together fifteen years ago and I personally experienced a number of these short stories.
Nick Brien
CEO McCann Worldgroup
~*~
The stories may be short, but having been a close colleague for many years of Juan Carlos at Leo Burnett, I know they will be long on emotion, wit and intelligence. His approach is the same regardless of level or background. Huge energy and charm coupled with a sharp eye for the right way to solve marketing and communications problems. As a result his ideas are not only often the right ones, but he gets them made by agency and client teams enthusiastic for the result.
“SHORTS” is sure to have the same effect. Leaving you excited and energized by his passion, spirit and storytelling.
Richard Pinder
COO Publicis Worldwide
~*~
“Juan Carlos has a talent for writing and the short stories are compelling and fun - best of all they are each a little present for the mind!”.
Woods Staton
CEO Arcos Dorados Latin America
~*~
Ideas, passion & true friendship
“SHORTS” is best defined by the best Spanish language author ever: Miguel De Cervantes, who wrote “A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.” In this case, “SHORTS” is a collection of “proverbs” of Ideas and Communication: short in length, but long on actual vivid experience, profound learning and intense creativity. It is based on Juan Carlos’ long and fruitful career in this passionate world, a career that spans decades, countries, continents, and clients. Then, all that he has thought, lived, experienced and created is communicated in short but profound, powerful, clear, insightful and moving short “chapters”.
Jorge Luis Díaz Iglesias
Vice-President Marketing Latin America
Procter & Gamble
~*~
My dear friend and colleague Juan Carlos Ortiz is a master storyteller whose material comes from his rich and colorful life. For those of you that don’t have the good fortune to know him, he is a hugely charismatic Latino; a romantic driven by his passion for all things beautiful and human. It is this passion and endless quest for the wonder of life that affords him insights often overlooked by others.
Here Juan Carlos shares with us some of his stories, stories collected along his life’s journey, stories that remind us a rich and accomplished life is achieved by pursuing the possibilities, the endless possibilities and with an appreciation of the significance of the seemingly insignificant.
Thank you Juan Carlos!
Catherine Guthrie
President Multi-National Accounts
Leo Burnett Worldwide
~*~
“In The Wrong Place”, simply put, was no mistake.
It was at the 1994 World Cup in Colombia when the advertising campaign “Un Lugar Equivocado” was launched for Davivienda, with extraordinary success and was precisely the crossroads of football and advertising where my friendship with Juan Carlos was born. Of the typical client/Agency role I found in Juan Carlos a creative genius, a professional executive, an “existential” conversationalist, a proud Colombian, a passionate soccer fan and a good friend. It was in 1994 when “Un Lugar Equivocado”, was born and that was no mistake.
Today in Colombia, a beloved Davivienda is on the hearts and minds of millions of Colombians. It is an admired brand that seeks to convey joy, good humor, rejoicing in the life experiences and Juan Carlos has been a primary part in this team... who would have thought that “In The Wrong Place” would exactly the right place.
Maritza Pérez Bermúdez
Vice-President Personal Banking and Marketing
Banco Davivienda S.A.
~*~
“SHORTS” is another one of Juan’s brilliant creations, always aiming for excellence, like when he created that famous commercial “Dandruff” for Colombian government or his Davivienda campaign “Your Money May be in the Wrong Place”.
Creatives like Juan Carlos very few in the advertising industry but these are not my words, it proven by his overwhelming success in industry from an early age.
I am filled with pride at the thought that a Colombian like Juan Carlos can conquer and succeed in the advertising industry and now show his other talent as a writer.
Guillermo Aponte
President
Coca-Cola Philippines
~*~
SUMMING UP JUAN CARLOS
“Love is measured in passion and friendship in years”. This is a quote from Antonio de Senillosa, a man of that rare breed of wise men who emerge every now and then from the rural aristocracies of the Catalan regions. I won’t speak of love today, although I almost could. I’ll speak of that other feeling instead, one that is formed over the years, called friendship. Of that fraternal bond not determined by blood, but by a shared conscience of so many experiences together, mutual encounters and intentional laughs that remind us of the joint responsibility Juan Carlos and I share and bear to each other as heartfelt friends.
Friendship starts when we stop counting. How many countries have we visited together? How many miles have we traveled? How many meetings? How many disagreements? How many thrills? It’s when these numbers become incalculable that we’re allowed to talk without speaking, to listen to the other one’s silence during a conversation, while we savor that silence. It is during this silence that we find the icing on the cake; that moment when we pass on our uneasiness or anxiety or concern, or any other weakness, which only the truest of friends can recognize as virtues of the other. Of the many things that underpin my friendship with Juan Carlos, the most recurring is the paradox. And of all of those, the most attractive one is Colombia. I started falling in love with Colombia through Juan Carlos. After him, other Colombians came into my life, also to stay. But the first Colombia I met was through the stories Juan Carlos would tell me, imbued with complicity and yearning, in the bars of Florence, Mumbai or Buenos Aires. Short stories in which I discovered the narrator that I so admire. Stories that made me visit Colombia on more than one occasion, but —and herein lies the contradiction—, never with Juan Carlos.
The tight agendas we had back then, and that we still have today, have never allowed us to coincide, to our mutual dismay. Although now that I think about it, it was probably fate that allowed me to visit the Colombia from those stories without the storyteller… so I could further enjoy it. Spending time with our common friends from Bogotá, without Juan Carlos. Remembering the times we all spent together, not too long ago, in New York, when Juan Carlos was named to the Advertising Hall of Fame of North America, just after his 40th birthday.
Juan Carlos is a legend before his time. And the reason is not his impressive professional résumé: President of Leo Burnett Colombia, of Leo Burnett Latin America, of Leo Burnett for the U.S., of DDB Latina, Global Creative Director for P & G (and so much more that the list becomes endless). The real reason lies in his passion for everything. For literature, music, family, food, museums, friendship… That passion we call in Spain “joie de vivre”.
Now, Juan Carlos gives us his “Short stories”. Any reader of these stories will see they’re a delight. For me, who has had the pleasure of listening to some of these narrated by him across a restaurant table, it’s a double privilege: to be able to enjoy with a book, an album that replaces pictures with words, and the ability to show others, thanks to their content, the material that makes up our friendship, a friendship Senillosa measured in years.
Miguel Ángel Furones
President
Publicis Groupe – Spain
~*~
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION SUMMING UP JUAN CARLOS
REGARDING AIRPLANES, INSANITY AND DEATH