![[AdStory] Alvaro Sotomayor (W+K Amsterdam): The work I am most proud of is the one that makes the viewer think "I didn’t know you could do that!"](https://media.iqads.ro/2013/02/photo-large-25076-cover-850.jpg)
Teacher at Miami Ad School, founder / Creative Director of the internship programme The Kennedys, artist - there are so many ways to describe Alvaro Sotomayor (Creative Director at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam). He works on clients one can only dream of such as Nike, EA, Heineken, Levi's and Powerade. Winner, among others, of 5 Cannes Lions, he still writes in his LinkedIn profile that his Honors & Awards are that he is "father of 2, husband of 1 and friend of many". Alvaro told us a little about what he learned through 17 years in advertising.
I grew up on the streets of Barcelona, Madrid, London, Los Angeles and Amsterdam.
As a child, I dreamt of becoming an archeologist, just like Indiana Jones.
The craziest thing I did in high school was to play with fire and fire extinguishers.
In college I was the guy who didn’t sleep.
What is great about our agency is that it keeps moving forward.
This is where we brainstorm:
This is how my desk looks like:
My relationship status with advertising: swinger.
I decided I wanted to work in advertising when I saw "If You Let Me Play" (1995) by Wieden+Kennedy Portland.
What is great about working in advertising is that it is an empty canvas waiting to be filled.
The work I am most proud of is the one that makes the viewer think "I didn’t know you could do that!".
My favorite place to fish insights from is in people.
Great creative campaigns have in common the ability to restart your brain.
The best clients are the ones that are brave. The worst clients are the ones that are scared.
I feel most frustrated when mediocrity enters the room.
In my opinion, the best creative works ever are too many to count.
The best piece of advice I ever received from someone in the industry is "Sleekness is a form of insincerity".
My best source of inspiration is the future.
In my browser history you can find WeTransfer.
Here's an old picture of me taken in Lisbon. I was documenting the Faile Temple - From 16 July to 15 August 2010, street art collective Faile displayed a public installation in conjunction with the Portugal Arte 10 festival. Temple is a full-scale, half-demolished wreckage of a church situated in Praca dos Restauradores Square. Using 3-D sampling, seemingly disparate pieces were brought together and reconstituted as something new, but still animated by the energy, the spirit, of the original.
Read more here: www.failetemple.net
