The Context of the Beginning:

modernista was born from a strong desire to create high-level advertising for brands of all sizes. It was a time of economic prosperity, and competition increased as consumption and business diversification expanded in Brazil.

This context is important to our history because, until then, advertising agencies were often born within more traditional families. Since we don’t have that kind of background, we needed to see what few others saw. We realized that providing top-notch technical services became more crucial than friendly relationships between clients and advertising service providers.

A Window of Opportunity:

Local and regional brands with great potential began generating more revenue due to increased consumption and needed to compete with higher quality in both their products and promotional communication. At the same time, they had to maintain competitive costs to avoid being outcompeted by large established brands and conglomerates, which had expensive and heavyweight advertising agencies and communication companies.

Unlike in previous times, the gap between large agencies and communication bureaus (small companies offering low-quality creative and production services) was vast. There was a significant void in which various local and regional brands needed the professionalism of large agencies, with research, data intelligence, and creative quality, but lacked the capital to afford them. On the other hand, the cheap and low-quality services of communication bureaus were not a viable option either.

Occupying the Possible Spaces:

It was precisely this gap that we decided to occupy. Born as a hybrid (online and offline) and Data-Driven agency—a concept common in more mature markets—we initially focused on traditional media. As we demonstrated our analytical capacity for understanding businesses, our aesthetic vision for corporate brands, and a precise understanding of differential positioning, branding services started to emerge. Digital projects were a natural consequence of being a hybrid agency, and they increased in volume, becoming intertwined with our close relationship with Data Science and, more recently, the adoption of campaign optimization through Artificial Intelligence.

The Social and Cultural Composition Changes, and So Do We: A business cannot be dissociated from social and economic transformations. Agencies or companies whose services and deliveries are related to cultural behaviors need to be highly attentive to these changes to remain relevant. The perception of profound changes and fragmentation in client sizes and services provided motivated us to change our positioning in 2023, in order to deliver our main attributes more efficiently to clients and the market:

1. Strategic vision and analysis of communication and businesses.
2. Creative excellence connected to brands and businesses.
3. Analytical project capacity.
4. High-quality project execution.
5. Research, data acquisition, and analysis.

We reached the conclusion that we are a company that offers applied creativity for brands that want to make a difference in people’s lives. And this understanding goes far beyond being just an advertising agency. To facilitate understanding and expand our range of services, we have separated into complementary business units, which also allows us to dive deeper into our relationship with clients:

1. Advertising: For brands with significant representation and recognition or those needing to achieve these milestones through cross-media campaigns with creative excellence and complex media planning.
2. Digital: For brands of all sizes that utilize at least 50% of their communication through digital platforms.
3. Branding: For brands of all sizes needing professional establishment or repositioning.
4. Consulting: For brands of all sizes requiring data-based planning, structuring high-performance creative and marketing teams, or seeking an external perspective to critically opine on processes and decision-making within promotional communication.