Casanova-Pendrill – Direct TV – Para Todos Radio Campaign – Bookstore, Flower Shop & Restaurant – 2000

This campaign is ancient history, but it’s still one of my all-time favorites. I really enjoyed writing radio spots back then—60 seconds of pure writing with no major production limitations.

More than 25 years ago, I was at Casanova-Pendrill, and we had a dream team: Viviana Pendrill, Favio Ucedo, and Ken Muench (with John Gallegos and Maria Maldini also part of the team)

Direct TV was an account where we gradually started doing some really good work. As always, I was very excited about creating a radio campaign. However, we had to produce it during the actors’ strike, so we needed an idea we could execute ourselves. That’s how Ken ended up making the calls as well (By the way, this campaign was the creative peak for Ken before he transitioned into strategy.)

What’s interesting about the idea is that all the calls were real and improvised; nothing was rehearsed. In fact, we made several calls to all kinds of businesses, and after selecting the three we liked best, the producer went and contacted the people we spoke with in person to get their permission to use the recorded conversations—which I don’t think would be legal today

With these radio spots, we won a gold at Fiap. Winning a gold today might not seem as significant, but back then, the Hispanic Market wasn’t winning many international awards. So, a gold at Fiap was like winning a Cannes today, if not more. (I swear I’m not exaggerating.) It was such a big deal that Luis Miguel Messianu called us on a landline from Argentina (not cheap) to share the news (thank you again, Luis Miguel).

We were so overjoyed that we literally did victory laps around the agency on our knees. (In hindsight, maybe we “exageramos un poco” with the celebration)