Roger Baran

Creative Director, Goodby Silverstein & Partners

Roger started his career in advertising as a marketing executive 18 years ago. He graduated first in Business School and opened his first business, a socially and environmentally conscious brand. He moved on and took a position as marketing executive when his partners decided to take on other initiatives. Although he was responsible for the company’s Cultural Marketing his innovative nature took him to create a system that used the company’s distribution system as an advertising tool and make millions in extra profit for the company. The project gave him his first award, and the highest recognition a marketing executive can get in his native country. But it wasn’t long before he moved on again. Roger felt there was something wrong in the relationship between clients and agencies. With a second degree in Social Communications and major in advertising he decided to dig into his savings and went to Miami Ad School. He landed his first copywriter role at DM9DDB, one of the most prestigious agencies in Brazil. He then moved to Chicago to work at Lapiz Leo Burnett. From there he moved to New York City to work at Lowe, but it was during a freelance gig at Razorfish were he met his now long time partner Sam Luchini. Together they won several pitches, including Axe and Azul, the Brazilian arm of JetBlue and helped open the Brazilian office of the digital agency. The team caught GSP’s attention after creating the innovative Tweet Race, an award winning for work Mercedes-Benz.

While in negotiation with two other agencies, Roger and Sam met GSP’s recruiter Zack Canfield at The Standard Hotel. The meeting almost didn’t happen because Roger was sick with the flu. But as history has it, he decided to travel across the country to join Goodby Silverstein & Partners in 2012 with Sam Luchini.

Since then the duo has consistently created groundbreaking work, including the celebrated Dream On and The New Creatives for Adobe, The Connective, for Cisco, Doritos Rainbows and Dreams of Dalí, for The Dalí Museum. During his 13 year advertising career Roger has worked on several global brands, including Adobe, Cisco, Doritos, Mercedes-Benz, Smart Car, American Express, Coca-Cola, Chase, Starbucks, GE, Honda, Stella Artois, Beck’s, Jack Daniel’s, Disney, McDonald’s and Kellogg’s.

His work has been awarded multiple times at every major festival from Cannes to D&AD, The One Show, Clios, Addys, Andys, and he was also nominated for an Emmy. He likes to think that his work sits at the intersection of innovation and inspiration and constantly says that together with his partner he always looks for an idea no one knows how to execute so he can learn with it. “If people don’t react in shock, we probably will dismiss the idea. As creatives we should always strive to learn something new with every new assignment.” And he means it. He has written books, made documentaries, created new products, got into character design, made cars fueled by tweets, virtual reality experiences that redefine art, prints that come to life with augmented reality, digital magazines that change every time you read it, programs that gave anyone the chance to have a movie idea into the Tribeca Film Festival and commercials made only from Photoshop layers. All of that while working in advertising. But as he likes to put it, “the best for our profession is still to come.”