Words by Rome Jorge
We caught up with the busy Raul Castro, Chairman and CEO of McCann Worldgroup Philippines, shortly after he had shown his mettle as a leader in both triumph and adversity: McCann Worldgroup Philippines’ win of one gold and one silver Lion at the 2017 Cannes Festival of Creativity for radio and its virally successful Valentine’s Day campaign for Jolibee, as well as the controversy regarding its campaign for the Department of Tourism.
“I did have to learn how to be a CEO—I think I learned it the hard way,” he confesses. Calling it the “hard way” was putting it lightly. It was having a bullet shatter his leg that first taught Castro the most essential lesson in leadership.
Stolen wheels and color wheels
“Very early on, in the 90s, I was shot. I was a victim of carjacking. I was a newly promoted Creative Director. I was about 26, 27, and when you’re a Creative Director, you feel you’re hot. You feel on top of the world. I was doing very well. The night before a presentation going home, I was driving a flashy car, some carjackers blocked the way, got out of their vehicle, aimed an Armalite, bang bang. Broke my leg. Got my car and left. And my first thought, ‘How’s the presentation tomorrow?’ It’s at 8:30. It’s not the era where there were cellphones. I was holding my leg because I was afraid it would be torn off, so I was carrying that all the way to the hospital, and I spent a lot of the time doing nothing. And then you realize, ‘If I die today, I wouldn’t have left anything to all the people I led.’ It was about me. So I said, ‘If I survive this, I’m going to teach.’ I think being handicapped—I couldn’t walk for six years—you learn to depend on people. So maybe it’s the universe’s way of telling me, ‘You can’t do it all.” Castro declares: “Leadership starts very early on. Leadership starts with you, when you know that it’s not about you.”
Castro’s path to advertising was neither straight nor narrow. For his stint at the College of Fine Arts in the University of the Philippines, his mother sometimes had to finish his homework. He confesses, “I went into Broadcasting because with Fine Arts, I just couldn’t sleep enough. You spend the whole night doing things, and you learn how to smoke a cigarette because you need to keep up, I learned how to drink coffee not for the pleasure of it but maybe out of necessity because you have to be awake. I remember doing that when I was starting the color wheel. And a fine arts student’s house is never made to have a fine arts student. You need a big table that inclines, a drafting table—I had to ask my mom to buy that. And somehow the biggest space is the living room, right? Nobody ever has a studio for his son. So you’re in the middle of the living room, you’re painting there, some people will be watching TV in the living room and you have to stand it. So you want everybody to be asleep before you could do your color wheel, or whatever it is you’re gonna do, correct? I was so tired of that. And then you have to wake up, you have just to take a shower, sometimes you ask your mom to finish your color wheel. ‘Mom, can you finish this? I have to wake up and I have to submit it.’”
“I just don’t like not being at the top of my class. I don’t like being in the middle and sometimes I’d be in the near-bottom. It’s not good. So I said, ‘Maybe I should shift.’ And my friends said ‘Why don’t we go into mass communications? We can do ads,’” he recalls.
Discretion and Valor
“Discretion is the better part of valor,” William Shakespeare famously wrote for his play King Henry the Fourth. This dictum was best demonstrated by Castro when McCann Worldgroup Philippines was recently blindsided by its erstwhile client, the Department of Tourism under the Duterte regime, when the DoT publicly demanded an apology and dropped the agency after its campaign ‘Sights’ proved controversial due to its alleged similarity with other tourism campaigns.
“For DoT, I had to immediately set up a town hall and gather all 300 people to let them know. McCann is big, so not everyone knows what everybody is doing, except that the name McCann was brought out there. So that afternoon, I said, ‘Let me assure you, the accusations being hurled against us are not like what it seems outside. Unfortunately I cannot talk about it, but this much I know: we have lived in accordance to what we’ve always believed in, truth well told. We say that about the work, we say that about the way we conduct ourselves, and we will adhere to that.’ I said, ‘The values what we adhere to are bravery of action, integrity of intention, generosity of spirit.’ I know we’re looking bad now—I do trust that maybe people have enough in the equity bank to know that they’re not exactly going to believe everything. Our reputation may have been tarnished, but this much I know: we did not do anything wrong. Half of the things being accused of us are not true,” narrates Castro.
McCannites were heartened by the support of colleagues and rivals. “Because it happens to all of us in the industry, and so there’s a little bit more understanding. They did reach out and they did make us feel better. And I’m really, really thankful to the industry, to our colleagues,” he confesses.
Castro reveals, “The networks called us, ‘We’re gonna block off our time for you to speak,’ etcetera, but I don’t think it’s any of their businesses. I think everybody loves a controversy. I don’t know if it would help if I speak. I couldn’t also talk about the specifics. I think it’s about the relationship. You’re my client. Even if you’re husband and wife, best friends, because somebody said something that is not very nice does not give the other party permission to spill the beans as well. Especially because we pledged confidentiality.”
“It’s so easy to be principled and to have principles, but principles only matter when they are inconvenient. And it was an inconvenient time to be holding on to principle, but that’s principle. When you have 300 people, you have to invest in culture. And I think it has served us well in times of crisis. You don’t wait for a crisis to happen to prepare an agency for it. All you have to do is keep on speaking about your values, keep on speaking about what is right and what is wrong, what we believe we must be versus what we must not be,” Castro declares.
Out of the Way
Even as McCann Worldgroup Philippines basks in the limelight of it glittering triumph at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity—the agency won a Gold Radio Lion for its “Lives 1 of 4 ‘Frank’, Lives 2 of 4 ‘Hanna’, Lives 3 of 4 ‘Nicky’” campaign series for Fully Booked, and a Silver Radio Lion for the “Dim Dads ‘Rufus’” and “Dim Dads ‘Pedro’” series for Nestlé Philippines’ Maggi Magic Sarap—as well as in the viral popularity of their Valentine’s Day campaign videos ‘Vow,’ ‘Crush,’ and ‘Date,’ Castro seeks to highlight the achievements of those he leads.
“For Cannes, we knew that these particular talents would be perfect for this. For them to be able to do what they were able to do is a joy. I think for Jollibee, we knew that this was the perfect guy who could do this. And so we created the environment for that. The process that they used to come up with that idea are here. The atmosphere that allowed for bravery to happen is here. I think a lot has to do with the clients believing in them and giving the go-ahead. Approving an idea that initially looked wrong, and giving the permission to prove itself right, that’s got to be the client. If you ask me, ‘What did you do?’ I got out of the way. And then I pushed them.”
“If I’m focused on what this person’s talents are and matching it with certain objectives that we have to achieve, some success will happen. I think leadership is a decision you make to lead other people to achieve something extraordinary, no matter the cost. It’s not a privilege, it’s a duty. And leadership is not a convenient, comfortable place to be in. You cannot lead without knowing what’s happening down there. I think every job—from our leaders to our people, to every person we hire—is to bring them to some point of success,” Castro elucidates.
He reasons, “Because success will change you. It will give you confidence—I mean, it’s given me that. You gotta have these goals. I tell them about good work. Why is good work important? It will cushion the blows of life. It’s your best defense. On top of all other things, everybody will like it, everybody feels proud, and you yourself will go home believing that you’re not talentless. My job is for everyone to feel that when they go home, they’re worth something, that they contribute. When people do a good job, it’s good. It’s good for him, it’s good for his wife, it’s good for his kid. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for your mom, do it for your kid, do it for somebody that will say, ‘My dad did that!’ That’s what makes life fantastic. It’s all of those romantic things.”
This article was published in the adobo magazine Culture 2017 issue.
