New creative studio 3 Chillies has launched in the UK to challenge the industry’s growing creative timidity. Its message to marketers – uou’re hot, or you’re not.

Behind 3 Chillies are former D&AD president and global CCO at DDB, Nick Bell; former Spotify marketer, Ric Motti, and former ECD at M&C Saatchi Sports & Entertainment and creative fire-starter, Ronaldo Tavares. Its first move is bringing in Melissa Robertson, founder of Now Advertising and former CEO of Dark Horses as a non-executive director, to help scale the business.

The founders believe that, over the years, the industry has become overly reliant on dashboards, optimisation loops and paid reach encouraged by tech platforms that (selfishly) reward spend and short-term performance and that this leads to brands that are over-measured and undercooked. But optimisation can’t fix a brand nobody cares about, especially when algorithms mean people decide in less than a second whether to engage with a piece of content or not. All the money in the world can’t buy someone’s attention. You have to earn it.

3 Chillies’ unique mixture of experience and background allows them to do this by combining cultural insight, earned-first thinking and brand craft to create work designed to travel organically, rather than rely on heavy media spend. The founders argue that Traditional agencies excel at scale but struggle to generate cultural impact, while PR-led models understand earned attention but lack long-term brand thinking.

Between them, the founders have delivered a wide range of work from Puma’s Mondo vs Karsten to the classic  John West’s Fisherman, with Women in Sport’s Sexist Boy, ŠKODA’s Tour de Femmes, and ŠKODA’s Paloma Faith in-between.  The studio’s first global campaign, for Denon, will launch later this year.

Nick Bell is “The Cinderella story of advertising: from post boy to president of D&AD. In his almost 40 years in advertising, Nick has won Advertiser of the Year twice, has held all the top jobs and won so many awards he uses Cannes Lions as doorstops (really).” 

“Too many brands are spending significant sums of money to actively annoy people. They’re making poor media choices and even poorer work. It’s not a numbers game; it’s a ‘be outstanding’ game. And we’re motivated by offering marketers the opportunity to be hot,” he stated.

Ricardo Motti is “a former (failed?) lawyer, bartender, photojournalist, and stand-up comedian, Ric found his calling in advertising.” He started as a digital copywriter and worked as a creative and strategy director at agencies in Brazil and London. He spent six years in different marketing roles at Spotify, running EMEA and global projects.

“Having sat on the client side, I get the pressure to show results fast. But focusing only on short-term tactics is the most expensive, inefficient choice you can make. You can have a billion impressions without really touching anyone, he commented.”

Ronaldo Tavares started his career as a junior designer in Brazil. He still loves Photoshop. “He’s known for crazy ideas, fiery presentations and shiny awards. He spent the last four years being ECD at PR shops like M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment and Pitch, learning the best (and the worst) from them.”

He commented,“Some people say that creativity is dead. Fuck that. We’re paid to daydream – it’s delicious. One day, we play with creators, the next we build an app, the next we make a series that competes with HBO. Tell me another job where you can do that? We’re a place for you to be hot without burning yourself.”

Melissa Robertson is “our resident adult. Melissa has been part of a startup, has launched one agency and scaled another. You can see why she’s needed. Melissa has spent 30 years moving brands (and occasionally industries) forward, while fighting the good fight as a director for Menopause Mandate and a trustee for the Women’s Sports Trust… among many other things. Really, she’s everywhere.”