- March 5, 2015
- 8:33 am
- Mary Ann McGrath
- no comments
Tale of Two Santiagos
From our student guest blogger, Colleen Callinan:
The View from San Cristobal Hill
After our morning stroll up San Cristobal hill, we boarded the bus for a 45 minute ride to a local barrio to meet with the leaders of a grassroots community center being aided by Rodrigo Aguyayo, founder of Proyecto Propio. We watched as the neighborhoods changed from tall glass skyscrapers dotted with fashionable business professionals strolling the streets to smaller more humble abodes filled with working class Chileans.
Barrio El Bosque is filled with small one-story homes and shops crowded together on narrow dusty streets. The community center was surrounded by a well-kept lawn with colorful lawn ornaments and wind chimes and stood out as an oasis in the neighborhood. We peeked in to see the small computer lab that offers internet access to the locals and the we met in a large recreational room. There we met Lolo, Maria and Laura – the heads of the community local who welcomed us graciously with cookies and soda and overwhelming excitement. They told us that in Chile they love a friend and a foreigner the same.
Our meeting opened with some sobering stats – while Chile has progressed tremendously since the 1990’s when dictatorship came to an end there is still a great deal of poverty. In 1990, 37% of the population was living in absolute poverty and now that number has rose to only 14%. Additionally, 70% of workers are living on under $700/month per person. Access to education, health and family services continues to be a problem and in a very polarized class system, access to education and social capital creates an impossible gap to close.
But they feel that the voice of the people is finally being heard and groups like Proyecto Propio are aiding them in their goals. Rodrigo talked about the struggles these women face to improve their community, navigating extremely complex and corrupt bureaucracy to find government funding while competing with more developed programs. We asked about private donations and the ladies told us they are almost impossible to find with the class divisions in Chile and the history of the dictatorship. We were not surprised to hear that this neighborhood was left very much on their own to solve the problems that they face.
We ended our meeting by hearing the creative and optimistic solutions these women had come up– from holistic health centers to communal nursing homes to help alleviate the pressure of hosting an elderly parent in a small and cramped homes. It seemed an impossible situation but Laura’s passion for her community felt unstoppable and Proyecto Propio is helping her take those first steps.
Our meeting in one of the community centers supported by Proyecto Propio
Our group and the community leaders of El Bosque
The wonderful community leaders
Back downtown in Santiago’s glamorous El Golf business district, we headed into a meeting with DDB Chile, a Latin America office of a multinational creative agency with clients like McDonalds and Johnson & Johnson. The trendy office was filled with quotes, yellow walls, and a presentation from Juan Luis Isaza, DDB’s director of Latin America.
We learned about how DDB’s founder Bill Bernbach instilled a philosophy of thinking differently and simply into the marketing industry. We watched commercials from the 1960’s and saw how their messages still stand true today. Campaigns like Volkswagen’s ‘Think Small’ broke all the rules and became universally famous for it. Bernbach’s core belief is that rather than focusing on product, marketer’s should focus on why anyone should care about what they had to say and try to stir emotion in the consumer.
Today DDB is still focused on influence. Irresistible ideas are the ones that create market change – just look at how Go Pro has outpaced Cannon & Nikon or AirBnB has challenged traditional hotels. These new companies have connected with larger cultural forces and added value in the consumer’s life, allowing them to share and participate in a new economy. Brands today are being advised to connect vs. trying to simply drive awareness and own mind space with consumers to break through.
We talked about how many companies focus solely on their competitive set but miss the opportunity to create larger influence. We saw integrated social media driven campaigns that activated millions of people by connection with consumers authentically driving massive impact through word of mouth. Consumers no longer want to be told what to think, they want to participate in the conversation; they want a voice just as the women in El Boque do.
We left today seeing the power of the people to come together and be heard. We saw a country that is very much coming finding ways to come together for change after a difficult history. We look forward to what tomorrow brings, and to another day in Santiago.
The DDB Latina office in downtown Santiago