Ideal, 16 years old: what hasn't changed

 By Ricardo Cesar, Co-founder and Global CEO of Ideal

Amazon, Ambev, Airbnb, Braskem, Coca-Cola, Creditas, Dell, Eli Lilly, Embraer, Enjoei, Eve, Faber-Castell, Facebook (Meta), Ford, Globo, Google, Hidrovias do Brasil, Inter, Johnson&Johnson / Kenvue, LG, Mercado Livre (Meli), MRV, Nestlé, Nextel, Nike, Nubank, Oracle, Patria Investments, Qualcomm, Softbank, Spotify, Stone, Totvs, Uber, Vórtx, WeWork, XP...

What do these brands have in common?

They are incredibly successful, innovative and admired companies.

But for me, each brand on this list - which fills a good part of the alphabet - is also a company that gave us the honor of being, or having been at some point along our trajectory, an Ideal client.

(The list is so much longer. And it’s growing. And it fills us with pride. And, of course, with responsibility).

This week Ideal has completed 16 years of existence. Sixteen!

I’ve written the list by doing the inevitable exercise of remembering the achievements, successes and mistakes, the people who passed through here and left their marks, the lessons learned, and the friendships built during this period. Ideal grew, became part of WPP and Hill & Knowlton , became professional, has invested in technology, tools, training, people and processes, created products and services, and won relevant awards.

In order not to go too far and stay just in 2023, we began an internationalization process, with offices opening in Mexico and in the United States - and, to top it off, we were part of the team that created a winner campaign with two bronze lions in Cannes. 

This whole flashback immediately brings me two questions to mind.

The first is what has changed since Eduardo Vieira and I founded Ideal in a cramped little room on Av. Faria Lima, in São Paulo, in the now (very) distant year of 2007. To stay at just one point, I can say, with one barely disguised pride, that the vision of innovation and technology applied to PR - which was the embryo of Ideal and which earned us the nickname “the first digital PR agency in Brazil” - ended up becoming prevalent in the entire market.

But a second question – which follows from the first – is perhaps the most important for me at this moment of celebration.

What hasn't changed since our origin?

Yes, because this is one of the many traps of success. People – or companies – work hard, very hard, grow, achieve goals, and when all this happens so many times they change their behavior and stop doing the very things that helped them “get there”. This is what Sérgio Chaia , one of our “historic clients” - and today a great friend – taught me. 

Evolving is fundamental, and changing is fundamental, but probably nothing is more relevant than knowing how to move forward and, at the same time, preserve your essence and values. 

I thought about it this week during a meeting with Reuters. The news agency was founded in 1851 in England by Paul Julios Reuters who, a few years earlier, had started an information service sent by electric telegraph and carrier pigeon – yes, that's right – to banks and other businesses that saw great value in receiving the news quickly. Well, it's easy to see that the world has changed a lot since then and Reuters has been able to keep up, but equally easy to notice that the essence of the company hasn't changed. 

Back to Ideal. What is the DNA we have held since our origin?

We came from the cradle with the mission of being a strategic consultancy that helps our clients to communicate and relate to their various audiences in an efficient, respectful, and ethical way. Thus, we help build and protect reputations. That hasn't changed.

Nor has the way we deliver this kind of result changed. The pillars of our way of doing things remain the same:

🧠 Obsession with serving well and generating results for clients – it's not always our most talked about trait, it's not the sexiest, but it's perhaps the strongest.

💡 Creativity + innovation – far from wanting to invent fashion for the sake of inventing fashion – in fact, we run away from sterile fads – we have a restlessness and a close look at where communication is going, helping our customers to understand new possibilities. But it's only worth it if you give real returns.

🏆 Entrepreneurial spirit – we want to build, we want to do, we are not afraid to experiment, we learn fast, we are not paralyzed by bureaucracies, everyone behaves like an owner, everyone – from the intern to the CEO – has a voice and space to suggest and implement changes.

👥 Welcoming environment, of respect and freedom (with responsibility) – here one helps the other, here one respects the other, here one trusts in the other, here the victories belong to everyone, here we know how to celebrate the achievements, here the mistakes are also collective responsibility and are discussed openly - not swept under the rug - here we have intelligent flexibility, here we want diversity, here we seek to build together a healthy environment where it is worth being, an environment conducive for talents to shine. Here how we do it is as important as what we achieve. 

Here are these four points - our secret sauce from the beginning.

Data analysis tools have changed, and new social networks and other ways of working with creators and influencers or producing digital content have emerged. More recently Artificial Intelligence has arrived with the promise – or certainty, in my opinion – that much more will transform the communication industry in the coming years.

We're keeping up, always. And we're changing a lot. Very much so.

But not everything.