Andrea Diquez
Independent agency Gut has appointed Andrea Diquez as its first-ever global CEO.
Diquez joins the five-year-old agency network from Omnicom Group's DDB Chicago, where she was CEO for nearly 18 months. Prior to that, Diquez was CEO of Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi New York and CEO of Woven, Procter & Gamble’s dedicated multi-agency shop.
“We've grown to 450 people in five countries and six offices without a CEO and it’s getting to a point that, when we look at our ambition of becoming one of the most diverse, creative, and influential independent networks ever, we need help,” said Anselmo Ramos, Gut’s co-founder and creative chairman. “We're not a startup anymore. We're going to the next level.”
The agency currently has offices in Miami, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Toronto and Los Angeles. It has been expanding recently with Gut’s Los Angeles office opening three months ago, according to Ramos; its Toronto and Mexico City offices opened within the past two years.
Gut Toronto, currently at 60 employees, opened with Tim Hortons as its first client and recently was named creative agency of record for GoodLife Fitness. Gut’s Mexico City office, which will be opening its first physical space in 20 days, has around 35 employees and handles work for clients like Corona, Mercado Libre, and Popeyes.
The agency had been looking for a global CEO for two years, said Gaston Bigio, Gut’s other co-founder and creative chairman, who worked with Diquez while at Saatchi nearly 20 years ago in Argentina.
“When I said yes, it was because these two [Ramos and Bigio] were offering me something I'd never done before, and I pride myself in living a life of firsts,” Diquez said. "[Bigio] said ‘This is going to be the job of the rest of your life, because you have the freedom to do things that you've never done before' and that's really exciting.”
Bigio said the hire was made to help the founders devise longer-term strategies for the agency, while Diquez will be able to help manage leadership and client relationships across the network.
“We need time to think about the next five years,” Bigio said. “In order to do that, you need time to think, to make a proper strategy. You need time to decide what are the gutsy moves, the bold moves you want to do. And for that, you need to have people taking care of everything that's going on in a good way.”
“With Andrea coming in we can be even more founder-led because now we have Andrea to support us, complement us and provoke us, so we don't have to be in-between being founders and CEOs,” Ramos added.
During her time at DDB Chicago, Diquez helped attract clients such as Reynolds Consumer Brands, Orkin and Bimbo Bakeries, while working on other clients like McDonald’s, Molson Coors, and, the U.S. Army. Prior to her departure, she helped appoint Sandra Alfaro as the agency’s president. Diquez, who has been working in the U.S. for the past eight years, says she also took on this role because she missed working more globally.
“Most of my career was global, going to China, going to Europe, going to Latin America and for the last eight years, I've been pretty focused on North America and in the U.S. Now it's like mixing the two,” Diquez said.
Bigio said she will also be focused on helping the agency expand certain capabilities like its media offering, which currently only exists in Brazil, as well as its content production offering that the agency has implemented for clients including Popeyes, Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Visible.
“A year ago the content department was just an idea on a deck,” Ramos said. “Now it's a whole operation ... As we grow as a network, what's really interesting is we keep adding more and more resources for creativity. We have data and we have strategy [that’s] really strong, but everything is in place to help creativity.”
The move comes on the heels of several key hires for the agency. A couple weeks ago, Gut promoted its North America Executive Creative Directors Ricardo Casal and Juan Javier Peña Plaza to North American co-chief creative officers. Currently, Gut’s Toronto, Mexico City, and São Paulo offices do not have chief creative officers but eventually will, Bigio said.
Diquez, who will be starting at Gut on Nov. 2, will move to Miami for the new role.
