Hugo casares: the marks appear as ghosts

Those of us who belong to the history of modern advertising are witnesses to the birth of intuitive, fresh and rozagant advertising of a character with an upper-class style, almost populist (although on the right), who, being a tango lyricist and poet, stood out as creative and especially as an advertising man, although he did not know that he was actually an entrepreneur.

Hugo was born in 1933 under the presidency of Agustin Pedro Justo, during the infamous decade, the decade of patriotic fraud and the conservative versus radical dispute.

Hugo started out in the Ricardo de Lucca - Publicidad Tan newsroom, although he was already a writer, cartoonist, and screenwriter.

Hugo's stories and resumes are widely disseminated on the internet and he derived them there for those who are interested in his particular life and work.

Hugo was an intuitive businessman. Very quickly he understood that advertising was the most powerful tool of mass consumer products to generate money. But what did Hugo understand? The main conceptual idea of the HC profession was to detect that people, in general, do not buy out of necessity but out of desire, enjoyment or satisfaction.

Hugo Casares, at the heart of the matter, was a poet, a tango lyricist. He knew how to touch people's feelings with words. He knew or understood that he could combine his intuitive art with the ability to convince others to choose one brand over another.

Neruda, Discépolo, Vallejos, Walt Whitman, would surely have been good copywriters.

The fact is that HC was able to combine in his head the ability to persuade with the generation of positive and differential values for brands.

The most emblematic case of brand building was Gelatti, a cologne for the summer that generated a sensation of intense cold after bathing, so much so that it made the user sneeze.

Jabón Federal was a client of Casares & Asociados and for that company, HC created the Gelatti brand, a differential positioning for the category of “After-bath Colonias Waters”. The traditional brand in the Colonia La Franco Water, from the Pharmacy La Franco-Inglesa ”, a traditional Florida local and“ Cangallo ”(today Pte Perón).

Hugo Casares recounted how the idea of Gelatti had arisen in his head.

“It was one of those January morning in which at nine in the morning it was already like 28 degrees with a humidity that I won't even tell you about. When I got out of the shower and dried off, as I did every morning, I got a good jet of eau de cologne that I buy at Harrods in London. Within three minutes I smelled like an English lord but with a "Lorca" as if I had not bathed. Imagine I went back to the bathtub and again under the shower. There I had the idea: a summer cologne that makes you feel cold in the middle of the summer ”

Can anyone imagine a Brand Builder of today presenting his research on a new brand in this way, in the Hugo Casares way?

In order of appearance, HC defined the positioning: I created a new category, “Summer Water Colonies”. Conceptual difference: for after the bath, in summer, and it is cold all over the body. Why is it cold ?: (Ask Federal chemists and technicians if you can add menthol to the cologne we have). Packaging: fundamental, glass that connotes ice, frozen. Name: Gelatti (ice cream). Communication: "So fresh that the cold it gives you makes you sneeze."

Anyway, Gelatti was a failure.

The conditions of the construction of a brand are, at times, indecipherable. Gelatti's idea was conceptually sound. Why did it fail? Possibly because it was trying to open a sub-category in a category in extinction.

Gelatti pre-dated Unilever's Ax. The colonies staggered in the face of aerosols and sprays in general.

At other times, HC had to face problems or opportunities of a net advertising cut. The famous five-second Gillette Sheets spot “Sir, do you have Gillette Sheets for tomorrow?” That revolutionized the purchase of seconds of media on television, it was to break a brand problem. A box of Gillette Sheets contained 10 units. Each blade yielded, on average, two or three shaves. Therefore, a user who shaved every day bought a box of 10 units every thirty days. But what happened? That the first nine razor blades yielded 27 days, but the last one yielded 4.5 or 6 times. Why? Because the user forgot to buy. Lord's commercial reminder has Gillette sheets for tomorrow,generated an increase in sales proportional to the effectiveness of the commercial that represented thousands of boxes per month to the Gillette company of Argentina, years before the company was acquired by Procter @ Gamble.

Do any of you - those over 35 - remember Takayama advertising? The famous Japanese who instituted the slogan "The concern of the tintolelos", the concern of the dyers. Do you remember what the brand of the product was? I'm going to give you two opportunities: remember or Google.

The brand was the ATMA plate, the agency was Ricardo de Lucca Publicidad and the creative director of the agency was Hugo Casares.

The ATMA brand reaped little fruit from the campaign, but the success of the commercial's notoriety confused the advertiser who invested more than necessary with the sole advantage of promoting the “brand” of the Japanese who did the television commercial.

Another commercial success with brand building failure was the Snail Spirals. The launch commercial was with a character that coincided with the success of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather with Mario Puzzo's 1972 book.

Don "Caracoleone" played by an actor with a very particular resemblance to Marlon Brando, Don Corleone's original Godfather, fulfilled the idea of "protection" of the "family" and his final slogan supported him publicly: "so that his family Long live a summer sens mosquito ”.

As another great publicist would say, Raúl Salles, notoriety in advertising is sometimes not good publicity for its sole reason of notoriety, Casares had many personal successes, from his agency, he made a lot of money and was very important for a group of companies that gave him voluminous advertising budgets.

Undoubtedly, his early association with Gray Advertising earned him rapid international recognition and therefore good business.

Citroen, the “frog” car, Rojo Trapal wines, Valet de Gillette, Criollitas de Bagley, Cooking Oil, El Gráfico from Editorial Atlántida, among many other brands, have made Casares Gray one of the top five agencies in Argentina.

Their support for the dictatorship of Videla, Massera and Agosti was also clear, and not only their support but also their collaboration in advising on communication and image.

Casares died in August 2009. In recent years, he carried an oxygen canister on his back that allowed him to breathe and alleviate the symptoms of his lung injury.

I saw him for the last time at the Casares Gray offices, on Suipacha Street, a few months before his departure. He was practically retired and complained about how he had been displaced, little by little, by some of his partners. Referring to his successor in the position of supreme creative was Vega Olmos. Hugo said that it was not explained how "this kid" was able to decide to air a commercial without asking him to approve it.

The last thing I remember about Hugo are some reflections:

“Advertising, advertising creation, is relatively easy. The difficult thing is to write a good tango lyrics ”.

"The advertising business is ending. Business, what is called business, was when you kept forty mangoes out of a hundred that the client invested ”