On November 9, the El Ojo de Iberoamérica festival of creativity gave centre stage to the most awarded creative in LATAM, Joao Totus, to talk about gender equality. A man, yes.
Totus was created with artificial intelligence. Who is Joao Totus and why was he given such prominence? He is the face of every winner from the last 25 years. A man.
Joao is a man because 90% of winners in the last 25 years have been men. And that needs to change.
With the problem staring everyone in the face, Santiago Keller, founder and chief executive of El Ojo, appealed to the audience to help change things, making several commitments to help drive greater equality in the future, including jury parity, women only awards and discounts for women-led agencies and work.
Santiago Keller, founder and chief executive officer of El Ojo de Iberoamérica, explained, “This year the festival celebrates 25 years of recognising the best talent, the best companies and the most creative work in Ibero-America. We wanted to mark this first quarter of a century with an iconic message that really highlights the humanity of our work and the people behind it, inclusive of all of us who contribute to this industry. El Ojo has built over 25 years by among all of us who take part: jury presidents, jurors, speakers, award winners and assistants. Together, we have built the most important international festival with a Latin perspective on the planet. So we sat down with Dentsu Creative and challenged them to come up with an insight and campaign for this year’s festival without any restrictions. We naturally also wanted to see where we should go in the future.”
With the help of AI, the Dentsu Creative team decided to combine the faces of all 362 winners from the last 25 years, to see what the most awarded creative director of El Ojo of all time would look like. The result, made up of 294 creative men and 68 creative women, has the face and voice of a man. And the insight? There is a clear need to close the gender gap in the creative industry with concrete actions, especially in creative leadership positions, so that modern creativity reflects the needs and desires of our audiences.
Marisa González, managing director of Dentsu Creative Spain, stated, “This creative process has been one of our favourites to date. We have loved being part of this journey with Santiago and his team, to celebrate the high-quality creativity that we have in Ibero-America, while helping advance this purpose with creative work that helps change society for the better, and more accurately reflects what audiences want.”
Keller added, “With the organic result the process produced, an issue that had been discussed for some time and that El Ojo has worked on for years, became irrefutable. In line with the aims of the festival, we wanted to make a clear statement this year, with a strong call to action to help change things faster for the future of our industry. That is why Joao gave the opening keynote, highlighting the situation and reaffirming El Ojo’s commitments in this area, expressed in four concrete actions: 45% of jury presidents are women, now getting close to parity; encouraging more female creative leaders and filmmakers with the +Mujere (+Women) award; a very strong representation of women and the diversity theme in the conference and workshops; and so that more women have the opportunity to win awards and have access to the brightest minds in the industry at El Ojo, a 35% discount on entries and on conference tickets for independent agencies led by women with less than 50 employees. This 35% reflects the average global pay gap between men and women.”
El Ojo de Ibero-America takes place from November 9 to 11 in Buenos Aires, with 16 Jury Presidents, 350 jurors, more than 40 international, regional and local conferences and thousands attending in person and many more following on the festival’s streaming platform. In addition, this year El Ojo has launched a new award to honour those who in the last 25 years have made significant contribution to the transformation of the industry and helped Latin talent achieve global visibility and relevance. This year the first honorees to enter the Latin Talent Hall of Honor are Marcelo Serpa from Brazil and Ramio Agulla and Carlos Bacceti from Argentina.
HowJoao Totus was made:
Credits:
Client: El Ojo De Iberoamérica
Founder And President El Ojo De Iberoamérica: Santiago Keller Sarmiento
Ana Carolina Degiuseppe: Account Manager
Advertising Agency: Denstu Creative
Managing Director: Marisa González
Executive Creative Director: Álvaro Rodríguez-Solano
Head of Creative Technology: Roberto Torres
Head of Craft: Luis María García
Creative Director: Miriam Alonso
Production: Vicente Silvestre @ The Royal Production Company
Zbrush & Unreal Metahuman Designer: Carlos F. Cuervo @ Metahuman Designer
Motion Designer: Miguel Velacoracho
AI: Fabián Doñaque @ Fabs Robotics
Sound Studio: Fran Viedma @ Blackout Studios
