Inspiring Boundless Creativity – an Interview with Tina Brazil, People Director, Profero

I’m very pleased to share with you this interview I recorded with Tina Brazil, People Director of the digital marketing agency Profero.

In 2006 Profero won a Special Award for Most Innovative Initiative at the Excellence in CPD Awards of the Institute for Practitioners in Advertising. (CPD = Continuous Professional Development.) If you remember my interview with Jill Fear, CPD Manager for the IPA you’ll know that Jill and her colleagues have high standards when it comes to professional development – so Profero have obviously been doing something special to win the award.

When I spoke to Tina, Profero had also just won a coveted Gold Cyber Lions Award at Cannes, for its Mini – Follow the White Rabbit campaign – the only UK agency to win Gold at Cannes this year.

In the interview, Tina spoke about why people development is so important to Profero and how they inspire ‘boundless creativity’ in everyone at the agency – not just the creative department.

Profero’s award-winning CPD initiative included the following elements:

• An ‘inspirational speaker’ series including Lord Puttnam, Greg Dyke, Neil Christie of wieden + kennedy
• A ‘lunchtime speakers’ series on practical industry topics
• Boundless creativity projects set for cross-disciplinary teams
• People skills training from Dawn Sillett
• A training intranet to act as an agency blog and raise awareness of available training options

For more details of the programme, you can download the Profero case study from the IPA website.

Profero

Profero is Europe and Asia’s leading independent full service digital marketing agency. Since it was founded in 1998 it has delivered over 5,000 effective and innovative campaigns for clients, more than any other agency of its kind. Profero specialises in advertising, web development, media buying and relationship marketing solutions. Its client base includes Mini, Astrazeneca, Western Union, Johnson and Johnson, Central Office of Information, Channel 4, Expedia.Over 200 imaginative people work as one team out of London, Hong Kong, Paris, Munich, Milan, Madrid, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney engaging clients with the world of digital communications by demonstrating its creative, connective and brand building capabilities.

Tina Brazil – People Director

Tina Brazil is responsible for ensuring Profero’s award winning people practices retain its talented team and attract untapped talent to the agency. This forms many guises from training and development, benefits, and maintaining Profero’s all-important culture by making sure people have fun along the way.

Tina started her career as a PA in Publishing before realising that she’d like to do her job in a more creative environment. After joining Redcell as a PA Tina moved to Profero as an Office Manager where evidence of the development culture can be seen with her appointment to the operational board as People Director.

Tina’s moto is: ‘It’s not what you do it’s the way that you do it!’

Click the icon below to listen to the interview.