Five years is a long time. Among other things, to set up an agency, to sustain it and to learn at full speed how to tackle projects like you’ve never done before. And to record a podcast that, with a bit of luck, we’re still producing. Here we are. We’ve just published the first episode of the second season of our vidcast La Cueva de MOE. We’ve done it in celebration mode, with a new set, a new office and even new lights, but with some regular voices: those of my partner, Jorge López, and myself. What have we talked about? About the beginnings of Incógnito and how it has been the path to set up a communication and marketing agency from scratch, as summarised by Top Comunicación.
The first thing I want to say is no: we have not changed. Well, yes, but not much. Jorge will say we’re fatter, but we’re still just as tiring, just as intense and, according to YouTube’s algorithm, just as invisible to the millionaire audience that still doesn’t know we exist. Maybe we’re not far away from going viral. After this episode with which we celebrate our anniversary, we no longer have any excuse to keep going.
Born in pandemic (and not dying in the attempt)
In this episode, we look back at how it all began. Incognito started with a pandemic in its midst, which is already a curious way of setting foot in the world. ‘Normally, when you set up a marketing and communication agency, you worry about the corporate structure, taxes, the office, clients…’, says Jorge. We had to do all that, but without an office, without face-to-face clients, and without knowing how long the confinement would last. And yet we did it.
Perhaps that was the advantage. As perhaps someone once said, ‘better to create from scratch than to have to destroy and start negatively’. We had no ballast, no inherited inertia, no oak desks, just people with desire, knowledge and a decent internet connection. Just people with desire, knowledge and a decent internet connection. Ah! We also had a webcam to connect with the first clients.
Marketing without a conference table
In this episode we take the opportunity to review how the way we work has changed since then. In these five years, marketing has had to remake itself. In the beginning, we experienced what it was like to have to work without events, without coffees with clients, without corridors where we could improvise ideas. ‘A part of the market fell away,’ says Jorge, ’and we had to look at digital channels. Some were prepared and others got big surprises.
What happened to us? We were lucky. We had already opted for a purely digital structure, but not because we were visionaries, but because we had no other choice. The funny thing is that it allowed us to grow from a more agile, more flexible and even closer place.
Small agencies, large service
An anecdote from Jorge in this episode I think will make you think: ‘Big agency, small service’. A client said it to him and he never forgets it. Often, size doesn’t guarantee anything. We see it with mergers and acquisitions: they sound like guaranteed success, but most fail. As Jorge recalls, ‘the brand is green, mine is yellow, we merge, and two years later one has disappeared and turnover has only gone up by 20%’.
We believe in the opposite. In growing without disconnecting from your customers. In services evolving, but without losing that closeness that really builds trust. If there is one thing we have learned, it is that agencies have a future, but only if they know how to structure, if they know how to tell the same thing in many different ways. If they understand that content is king, but also the advisor and the general.
Resolutions, Nirvana T-shirts and other 90’s stuff
Another thing we are addressing this time is the famous ‘corporate purpose’. Remember when that was the big thing? Just four or five years ago it seemed that brands had to have a soul to survive. Well, now it turns out that there are governments that prefer companies with no soul, no inclusion, no nothing. If the purpose doesn’t fit with their policies, so long, Maricarmen. Some brands have recently shown that they are quick to retreat, such as McDonald’s or Accenture, which have abandoned their inclusion and diversity goals after the arrival of Donald Trump.
‘There are no longer shared purposes, there are individual purposes,’ recalls Jorge. And it is true. Each to his own, in his own bubble. Maybe there was more posturing than commitment, just like the Nirvana T-shirts in Primark: a lot of aesthetics, but little real grunge and zero memory. Who remembers who Nirvana were now?
AI, press releases and well-used nostalgia
We also laughed on this occasion at the odd comparisons, which are a trademark of the house. Like when Jorge compares and affirms that we are in the year 1920, but with generative AI instead of electricity. We are like the salesmen who went from house to house saying: ‘Hey, you might be interested in putting light in your kitchen’, only now we sell prompts.
Speaking of light, what if only the right journalist, in the right sector, at the right time, received press releases? What if we applied behavioural marketing to content distribution? The thought hasn’t crossed my mind, but it’s been around,’ says Jorge.
What now?
We close the episode by saying that if you don’t move, you go backwards. Standing still preserves nothing. Five years ago we didn’t exist and today we record a podcast, broadcast on YouTube and are still, against all odds, standing. Where will we be in another five years? No idea. In the metaverse? On a set on Mars? That’s where we might meet Elon Musk.
In the meantime, we will continue to talk about what we love: communication, marketing, culture, purpose, evolution. With new lights, but with clear ideas. With the certainty that moving, even a little, is better than standing still.
See (and hear) you in the next episode – subscribe!
