Barbara Soalheiro (Mesa&Cadeira): “You have to take the road less traveled”

Founder at Mesa&Cadeira, Barbara Soalheiro has a prodigious career in several fields of the creative market. Mesa&Cadeira is a company that has been pointed out as one of the most efficient and innovative models in the world by people at SXSW, GOOD Magazine and Proxxima. Barbara is also an author (her book Como Fazíamos Sem won a Jabuti, Brazil’s most prestigious literary prize, and is compulsory reading in every public in the country). Barbara has been helping companies like Google, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Samsung make bold moves in a world of constant change. BR talked with Barbara about her breakthrough prototype Mesa, but also about her career in journalism and her view on how technology is impacting it.

By Romanita Oprea

How long did it take you to develop the Mesa and when did it start?

It started when I went to work at Fabrica and that is when the seed was planned: learning is done the best way by working. It’s hard to pin point the exact moment when an idea started, but I have a document from 2009 where it shows the beginning, the formula was there: one leader ahead of the table, a team with a very diverse background and on a mission. A project that has to be conceived, developed and launched. But we did the first Mesa in 2011. The gap between those dates it’s basically me being afraid. Because I didn’t know of anything like that, I didn’t know if it was going to work. The first Mesa it wasn’t totally like we do it today, because we didn’t prototype anything.

When people are debating, our brand is in criticizing mode, is in finding problems mode. When you make people executive, your brain automatically changes into finding solutions. You have to make something. But in Mesa number 1 we didn’t make anything. And it was because I didn’t have the history to say to the leader: trust me, let’s take a decision. You need to be really brave, especially if you haven’t seen another example before.

But that first one was really important to me, because at the next Mesa I knew exactly what I wanted to say to the leader I invited: this is not going to be a key note, there aren’t four ideas, it’s one thing that we have to make. It was Anthony Barrow, the British designer – we did like a collection of posters. His work is on posters.

After we did Mesa number 1 it was a company that wanted to buy Mesa. And I remember I went to this meeting and I asked this guy: “What are you buying? Because I don’t even know yet what I am selling.” I knew I had something, but I didn’t know exactly was it was going to be and how to speak about it. Now I know, but back then it was just intuition. So, I took a decision back then in 2012 that I was not going to sell it. Back then companies were buying workshops, then talked and talked and talked and wrote a few post its.

We were about making stuff. And we tested our product until 2013. We did Mesa for companies, we forced the prototype, we pushed it to see its potential and where it can go. All they wanted was a discussion, but we told them we believe in doing. Now it’s completely different. The clients buy it because they see that the Mesa is ready, it’s a finished product. And it has results.

And you have the history to show them what it can do.

Exactly. And I am super confident. The fact that we deliver what we promise it’s fundamental for what we do.

Do you think it works for all kinds of problems or are there some for which a 5-day time frame would be too short?

I think that we can solve anything. We believe that when you are just planning you are not making decisions. You just imagine different things. When you start making, it forces you to make decisions. What we say is that even you throw away the prototype after a Mesa, you would still have the conviction.

There was one problem, one time that somebody presented it to me and I felt hopeless and that was children sexual exploitation. Don’t know how to solve that one. All the data shows that the more you talk about it, the more it increases the problem. And it’s a global thing. In countries like Brazil and in areas where people are poor it’s bigger. Every time I talk about it I get a little bit frustrated, because it’s a huge problem. Like a shadow on the world.

It’s a social problem, not a business one, which is completely different.

But I think we can solve social problems. We did a beautiful Mesa in New York with the transgender community. We launched this application that it opened up a conversation of subjects such as “how does it feel to tell your mother you are a transgender?”

Most of the times that somebody brings over a challenge we believe it’s impossible to solve it. We don’t enter a Mesa already having the answer to the problem. And I think that speaks a little bit about our clients. In Brazil we’ve built such a reputation that people buy a Mesa because they trust other people and the work that we did. But at the beginning someone has to be brave and connect to a Mesa and say they want to work with us. Because we don’t promise them anything. We know we will have a great team and we will find the answer, but the answer can jump from the client as well.

What do you believe were the best decisions you took in your career and why?

The best decision was when I left to Fabrica. I was editor-in-chief of a magazine in Brazil (a platform of magazines, merchandize, products, etc). I was 26 and I had an amazing job. And when I received an e-mail from Fabrica inviting me in Italy to come and be a resident at their magazine it was a very hard decision to take. And it proved to be the best decision I took. Of course the young age also helped a lot. Today I have three kids, so it would be harder. But even if it’s harder, I think that people who are in my position should take that decision. Especially in the world of today when change is going to be so fast. You have to take the road less traveled. Just follow your heart.

And what you shouldn’t do is take a decision based on this instant, on safety. Who would have thought that journalism would be in the financial challenge that is today? And so many times I look at the ad agencies, I have so many friends working there and they know there will be changes, but they don’t really believe that it might collapse. Just like the people in the music industry. But I was a journalist and I saw it happening, therefore I believe you have to make decisions that are not based on being safe and only on this moment.

I am an optimist and I believe that a world that is changing a lot is a world in which you have more opportunities to try out new things. You have to be connected to what you want to do.

You were just talking about the decline of journalism. Do you still see a future for real journalism and how do you see advertising’s development in recent years?

I think that the past years people thought that content is free, but I think that people are already starting to understand that it is not. What is the value of content? What is the value of a documentary of a photo journalist that travels to war zones and spends months to take that one picture?

I believe we are in an era where Netflix is setting the value. It connects people from all around the world, who agree to pay what Netflix charges. But, if you look at Spotify, things are different even if it seems like it might be the same – the music industry instead of the movie industry.

What I feel is that people will start to understand the complexity of value and content, therefore I do see a future. And the real valuable content will be sustained in the future, even the big media corporations will never be what they used to be.

The idea of borders does not exist anymore and companies should think globally. Businesses should look at a universal language. Israel has this incredible entrepreneurial and tech eco-system. They did great and understood they have to create for a global market.

You also worked for the first publication that did Augmented Reality. How did that happen, how did the idea come up to you and your colleagues?

At Fabrica where the Colors magazine is there is a great tech team. One day we were doing an issue on teenagers. We wanted to be able to show how transformative they are. You could see a picture of a guy with a shaved head and when you entered the AR app you would see his shaving his head or couples kissing. You can talk about that in a magazine, but when you see them is completely different. The emotion is there. This is what we wanted to be able to give the reader.

We did it first because we had the capabilities to do it. 3-5 months later Esquire did also an issue with AR, but ours was way better. One of the things I was really sure about at that time, together with the editor-in-chief, was that we don’t want a tacky graphic. Without the QR code is way harder to do it, because it’s less stable. The tech guys worked really hard.

We also did another great number called “The Sea”, with people who were seeing the sea for the first time. I learned something from a tech guy I worked with and who said “technology dream is being visible”. In my opinion, what technology should be is fulfilling wishes and desires. Whenever is very gimmicky is wrong.

More about Barbara

After graduating, she was selected for Editora Abril (the biggest publishing house in Latin America) New Talents program, was soon hired as an editor and, by the time she was 26, became the youngest editor-in-chief in the company – in charge of the teen brand Capricho, she ran an operation that included a magazine (which doubled its readership on the first year of Barbara’s tenure), a website, a range of licensed products and a set of events. In 2008, Barbara was invited to work at Fabrica, Benetton’s Communication Research Center in Italy. She became editor-in-chief of Colors (the groundbreaking magazine founded in the 90’s by Oliviero Toscani and Tibor Kalman) and started blurring the limits between content and technology in her work: she was in the team that transformed the magazine website into a collaborative platform and launched the first magazine using Augmented Reality in the world. Back to Brazil, she became a Creative Director at digital ad agencyCubocc (part of FLAGCX).

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