Quality Meats’ Paola Ortega on 5 tips (and a song) for being yourself in advertising

Ad Age is marking Hispanic Heritage Month 2024 with our Honoring Creative Excellence package, in which members of the Hispanic community revisit pivotal projects or turning points in their careers. (Read the introduction and all the essays here.) Today, Paola Ortega, head of strategy at Quality Meats, offers a playbook—and a music video—for staying true to yourself in advertising. Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here Most days, I sit here and wonder how the hell a girl like me, from Ciudad Juárez (Google it), has managed not just to survive in advertising but ultimately find herself attached at the hip to three insanely talented, hilarious and kind humans—Amy Edwards, Gordy Sang and Brian Siedband—helping to shape the future of a place like Quality Meats. I mean, I am living the ultimate American Dream—spending more time than I’d like to admit finding the right GIFs to tell a story and debating what constitutes the right amount of meat puns in a client presentation. And let’s be real—there’s about 50% of this that’s all luck. I was in the right places at the right times and with the right humans who believed in me. But the other 50% was me. Who I am and how I carry that to my work. So yeah, every now and then, I also high-five myself. Because at every turn, I stayed true to myself. I didn’t know where things would take me, but I sure as hell knew what I wanted. I knew no matter what, I was who I was. I was me. I wasn’t going to change for the industry. I wasn’t going to let the industry change me. I might not have a Brené Brown level revelation for how to do this. But I have, at the very least, a song with a super sticky beat that’ll be stuck in your head until your next mind-numbing status meeting, and maybe a helpful thing or two to try yourself. I could never do their lyrics justice, but if I had to give the TL;DR of all 2 minutes and 55 seconds of “Soy Yo” by Bomba Estéreo, I’d say: 1. You don’t need to be/think/work like anyone else. I remember when Jason Lonsdale gave me the big opportunity at Mekanism that helped me make my first big jump outside multicultural agencies, and I was worried if I’d “fit in” and measure up, and he said to me, “You didn’t come here to be like anyone else. You came here to be you and share your unique perspective. Not because you are Hispanic, but because you’re a killer strategist. So just always stay true to that, and I will always have your back.” That last bit is probably what stuck with me the most, and allowed me to be myself. He said it, and he meant it. He let me sit across the table from Ivy League graduate clients with big fancy titles and he let me be/say what I thought and put my own spin on things. He didn’t give me a template or playbook to follow; he let me find my own. I owe you big, JL. 2. Get excited about the possibility of failing. Failing feels terrifying when you feel like you need to prove yourself and show the world that you deserve to be there. But when you realize that failing is actually a sign that you’ve pushed things far enough to see just how wrong you could be to get it right, it transforms from a big hairy monster hiding under your desk to a bit of a force of good helping you push forward. Preacher, and more specifically the one and only Seth Gaffney, taught me that safe and buyable isn’t always the most exciting, and above all helped me channel that confidence to fail that I carry with me to this day. 3. Keep. Having. Fun. You pour your soul into this daily. Enjoy it. Don’t let the cynics rob you of the fun we’re meant to be having. Chase that. Every time I find myself crying laughing with Amy, Brian and Gordy, I know I did it right. 4. Trust yourself, and don’t overthink it. Especially as a strategist, this one is a game-changer. Yes, do your homework, but also trust your instincts. Everyone else out there is doing the same. Stop questioning yourself. No one else is, so why would you? 5. Your point of view is just as valuable as anyone else’s. You don’t owe anyone anything for being here. You’ve earned it. And you’re here because people care to know what you think. So, embrace it. Say it. Unapologetically own it. This one is so much easier said than done. It took someone once saying, “Oh, Paola should come, she’s our token brown girl” out loud in a meeting for me to realize the only way to never make someone question my worth was to never do it myself.

Quality Meats’ Paola Ortega on 5 tips (and a song) for being yourself in advertising

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