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Latin Interactive World:M. Montefiore “Local flavor is essential when it comes to content and social networking”

Content

Global Mind is a digital marketing agency founded in 2000 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The agency currently has offices Marcelo-Montefiore-285x188in Buenos Aires, Colombia, Santiago de Chile, Mexico City, and Miami, as well as co-responsibilities in Lima and Toronto.
“Global Mind was born when we started to notice that advertisers did not understand what to do on the Internet. It was the height of the Internet bubble, when the dot-coms began to spring up and gain an audience,” said Marcelo Montefiore, CEO and founder of Global Mind, in an interview with Portada.

Translated by Candice Carmel

“We are an independent agency which began to grow , financed with the profits of our own business. The company has external funding and does not need it,” said Montefiore.

The Global Mind founder recalls how the company found a niche for digital media in between agencies and advertisers. “There’s an advertising phrase that says ‘the money goes where the audience is,’ and advertisers began to pay attention to the phenomenon of digital media but did not quite know where to be or how to advertise themselves. And agencies and media buying companies faced with this new ecosystem did not understand the business either. And this is where we found a place to dive in and specialize ourselves.”

Pan-regional

Global Mind began planning and buying digital media for advertisers and agencies in Argentina, before gradually expanding in the region.

Portada: Did you set out to expand in the region?

Marcelo Montefiore: The truth is that it was an ideal on the planning horizon. If the conditions came about, we wanted to be regional but did not have the financial backing to give it a shot. Then we started to grow, but did it one step at a time. We started opening offices with the support of clients who needed them in certain places.

Portada: What percentage of your income comes from direct advertisers and agencies?

Marcelo Montefiore: More than 80% of Global Mind’s current revenue comes from direct client services. This came as a result of agencies that stopped outsourcing their services to us because they began developing their own digital media departments.

Portada: What is your view of today’s digital advertising market?
Marcelo Montefiore: It is an interesting time in the market because the struggle to make advertisers understand that they need to invest in digital is now over. Today, the struggle is to convince them to invest 20 pesos instead of 10. We no longer have to explain why they need to be in digital media or sell them on being on “the Internet.”

Portada: How do your biggest customers structure their digital investments?

Marcelo Montefiore: Our clients spend between 10% and 20% of their budget on digital media. Most of the investment is placed locally, because you get better segmentation and even better deals. We provide local services in each country, even for clients who already have regional coordination.

Portada: Why is that?

Marcelo Montefiore: Because the local marketing manager has a local perspective which is different from that of the neighboring country, as well as different from that of the regional marketing manager. The local manager knows his local reality.

Portada: What do you think is needed for developing advertising on digital media?
Marcelo Montefiore: What some advertisers need to do give the right priority to digital marketing. That means thinking of specific strategies for this medium, because there are still many who end up adapting off-line advertising to online advertising.

Portada: What do you think will be this year’s surprise?
Marcelo Montefiore: I think the surprise will be changes to the digital ecosystem. The way advertising is allocated will change, as will ways of measuring it. Everything will be quite dynamic and technological, which will absolutely align spending with ROI.

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