2023 Creative LIAisons Coaches
Tomás Ostiglia
Executive Creative DirectorLOLA MullenLowe
Madrid
Tomas Ostiglia is the Executive Creative Director of LOLA MullenLowe Madrid, Spain´s #1 ranked creative agency. Tomás ranks as the 3rd Best Creative Director in the World in the Cannes Report and is a renowned creative with more than 20 years of experience in crafting effective and award-winning campaigns. As Creative Director for Unilever’s Magnum Ice cream global account, he helped them grow to become a Billion Euro brand in addition to winning many Cannes Lions and Effies along the way.
He started as a copywriter at Ogilvy Buenos Aires and then moved to Spain to join FCB where he became Executive Creative Director and later, to Arnold, as General Creative Director. In 2008 he returned to Argentina as Chief Creative Officer at TBWA, then founded his own agency, OCG, before moving back to Spain to join LOLA MullenLowe in 2014.
For the past 9 years, Tomás has been responsible for award winning creative work for Magnum, Dove, Burger King, while helping to build top brands like Axe/Lynx, Lipton, Cornetto, and Bayer.
While at LOLA, he helped lead the agency to win Agency of the Year at El Sol three times in five years and rank among the world´s Top 20 in Cannes. He has served on the Cannes Lions Jury X3, London International Awards X2, El Ojo de Iberoamerica X2, and El Sol between others, and he is a member of the MullenLowe Group Global Creative Council.
He started as a copywriter at Ogilvy Buenos Aires and then moved to Spain to join FCB where he became Executive Creative Director and later, to Arnold, as General Creative Director. In 2008 he returned to Argentina as Chief Creative Officer at TBWA, then founded his own agency, OCG, before moving back to Spain to join LOLA MullenLowe in 2014.
For the past 9 years, Tomás has been responsible for award winning creative work for Magnum, Dove, Burger King, while helping to build top brands like Axe/Lynx, Lipton, Cornetto, and Bayer.
While at LOLA, he helped lead the agency to win Agency of the Year at El Sol three times in five years and rank among the world´s Top 20 in Cannes. He has served on the Cannes Lions Jury X3, London International Awards X2, El Ojo de Iberoamerica X2, and El Sol between others, and he is a member of the MullenLowe Group Global Creative Council.
I've always tried to avoid certainties, and sometimes I even think it's an excuse to justify my poor memory. But the truth is standing against conventions has allowed me to do things differently and stay fresh without losing the capacity to surprise when facing problems.
That's why I often have mixed feelings about sharing ways of doing things as I get skeptical about how good they are, especially when the same methods have already been used as I firmly believe that to achieve new results, you must change your ways.
But luckily, here comes LIA (London International Awards), asking me to be the coach for three young talents who are starting out in this industry. So, I am compelled to dig deep into my experiences, which are much more concrete than my questioned certainties, and prepare a talk to help them better see what could await them in the future.
The first thing I tried is to be brutally honest. Telling them how things really are with no sugarcoating, especially about my own experiences, and opening up so they can see beyond the pre-conceived idea they have of things. Our work creates a very strong image (we are paid to do that, and we have learned to do it with precision), but here, things must be the opposite. These talks are for them to see the threads, the dirt, the whole truth behind the image conveyed in a story or idea.
So, I stripped down all our best campaigns, and seeing the sparkle in their eyes was sublime, because the excitement they were feeling was the realization that there are no gods, heroes, or geniuses here (well, there are, but that's someone else, not me). What really makes things happen is the work where great things are achieved by actually going out and doing them. Everything involves an ever changing process, but most importantly with great passion, nothing is impossible. Without crazy ambition, you won't make anything happen. You have to push hard to start the car and learn to drive it to reach the finish line.
We will stay in touch for sure and we got to know each other, which is the most important thing. It was almost therapeutic for me to listen to them and I think I learned more than they did. I guess that's what education is all about. I've always considered myself a bad student, but after this amazing experience, I guess I get an A distinction.