Why Gut’s Singapore office means so much to the challenger agency

“Since day two of Gut, we’ve always dreamed about Singapore,” says Gut co-founder Anselmo Ramos, launching into the story of he and fellow co-founder Gaston Bigio conceived of their new global creative agency network. At table 57 of the Martinez Hotel in Cannes, he spoke about spending an entire night reserving internet domain names for cities around the globe. 

“It’s really special to be here because this is a dream come true for me personally,” Ramos continues. “When I was a junior writer starting out in my career in Brazil, I would look at the ads coming out of Singapore, especially the long-form copy ads, and I was so inspired. I even considered just moving here without ever being here before, just because of the quality of the writing.”  
 
Ramos spoke with Campaign Asia-Pacific immediately before the official launch of their newest office address. An hour or so later, Ramos would pay tribute in-person to former Ogilvy CCO Eugene Cheong as the author behind many of these inspirational copy ads and someone he professionally aspired to write like. “So Gut Singapore was always part of the plan, it just took us five-and-a-half years,” Ramos explains during the exclusive discussion with Gut’s global and Singapore leadership. 

Of course, it's not merely the craft of Singapore that attracts Gut to Asia. Nor is it the design prowess of Japan, or the humour of Thailand, just a few disciplines and markets for which the leadership references their appreciation.   

As global CEO Andrea Diquez is quick to point out, Ramos and Bigio may have dreamed of conquering the world, but it’s also global clients (Gut’s portfolio includes the likes of AB InBev, Kraft Heinz, Google, Coca-Cola and Restaurant Brands International among them) who have asked them to be here. Without Asia, Gut’s global network thus far had been incomplete.  

While the team is short on details about the size of their staff and number of clients in the region, a modest start using Singapore as a hub is not an unfamiliar nor unwise strategy for many agencies as a first step. Gut has already announced its core leadership team in Asia, helmed by managing director Jessica Davey, the former APAC head of clients at Media Monks, with Belynda Sim-Mak as head of strategy and Liz Leow as account lead. Carlos Comacho leads the creative team as CCO, with Meyvi Wedelia also brought in as creative director. 

As Davey points out, the Singapore hub will act as “command and control” for the region, but work that comes in for individual Asian markets will be carried out by satellite teams within those locations so the work reflects local culture, much like what Gut is already doing in Korea. 

While Gut wants to stay simple and agile, there is nonetheless more bravado than humility in the agency’s rapid rise around the world. This is Gut’s third office opening this year, and it’s tenth overall since its founding in 2018. For its Singapore location, it chose none other than the iconic Raffles Hotel arcade to set up shop, making “a big statement” from the historic commercial heart of the city, according to Ramos, who has also long admired the hotel’s very own marketing legacy. 

And as much as Gut wishes to remain respectful of the markets it operates in, it also wants to bring its Latin American roots and brave creative culture to the rest of the world.  

Gut instincts

“You will always feel the Latin soul of the company in every country,” says Gut’s global CEO, Andreq Diquez, explaining how their offices inevitably become a blend of Latin American talent who want to grow and move to new locations, working alongside the local talent brought in, creating a vibe “which is a little bit different from others that is so important in a market where everyone’s just collapsing into big conglomerates.”  

“We’re very passionate and we bring that everywhere we go,” Ramos says, describing himself and his colleagues as proud “ad nerds” who love to talk about advertising and ideas. “We’re very intentional about culture. We have our own language, talking about ‘gut X-rays' and ‘gut punches’... it’s a borderline cult,” he admits. (“A happy cult,” Davey clarifies.) 

Case in points are the agency’s three core values: intuition (following your gut), transparency (being able to spill your guts), and courage (having the guts to follow through with something bold and brave). 

But while every one of their offices is “gutsy at the core,” and the agency has been making waves creatively with brazen campaigns, one wonders just how well this culture can adapt to more conservative markets in Asia such as Singapore, with higher proportions of risk-averse clients.  

Here, Ramos explains that bravery is not binary (where either you have it or you don’t) and Gut is not coming to Asia to impose its creative ideals on everyone. “What’s brave in Japan is different from what’s brave in Thailand or India,” he acknowledges. Instead, bravery is described as a process, with its own timeline and scale from one to ten. Some clients in certain markets might be a ‘seven’, others might be a ‘five’ or a ‘three’.  “For us it’s all about knowing where you are,” says Ramos. “as long as you want to move up, little by little, each year, that’s fine.”  

“You’re not going to necessarily see huge viral stunts happen here, or things that challenge structures and systems,” Davey adds, “But there is a lot of bravery that manifests differently just like creativity manifests differently in this region.”  

At the same time, Gut feels it’s good to know what the agency stands for and feels that they can fill a void in Asia left by underestimating a client’s need to be stretched creatively by their agency. 

“This region is too big for us to believe that we’re not going to find clients who want to be challenged,” Gut co-founder Gaston Bigio tells the assembled crowd at the Singapore launch event. “A lot of clients in this region assume that they would love to be challenged. And the offer we have is so easy and clear that only the clients who want to be challenged will approach.”   

Indeed, at least one CMO Campaign spoke with at the Gut launch was in attendance for this very reason. But even marketers craving creative bravery have many other factors at play including costs and capabilities, which at times has led them into the arms of integrated agencies and larger companies.   

Feeding the Gut network

On this point, Gut’s move one year ago to sell a majority stake to its client, global tech consultancy Globant, should start to pay dividends and assuage some clients seeking the greater capabilities of a digital transformation company. Globant is a tech services behemoth, with more than 29,000 employees in 33 countries worldwide working on IT innovation, design and engineering.  

However, one year in, it seems as though Globant and Gut, the tech nerds and the ad nerds, are still feeling one another out. While agency and consultancy have been introducing clients to one another and continue to see exciting potential in combining tech and creativity to make new work possible, Ramos says their objective is not to immediately create another Accenture Song. Some collaborations between Gut and Globant are underway in Mexico, Spain and the US, Diquez says, but for now they are mainly supporting one another with growth. 

What is clear is that Gut’s leaders are intent on moving forward in Asia according to their dreams and values as much as with strategy and spreadsheets. Their global network is well on its way now, with management comfortable to keep building it as they go—like one might expect from those who instinctively follow their gut.