December 2016 brought “Family”. For someone who hadn’t had a proper family Christmas in four years, it was a reinforcement of love, comfort, and a sense of home – truly wonderful, in fact.
We fail to value the small things we have. Turning on the tap and having clean drinking water. Making a call and feeling close to those we love. Getting in the car and taking a dip in the sea. Leaving the house without fearing for one’s life. Being protected by the law when necessary. Living in freedom. Not being afraid to walk alone. Not fearing mosquitoes that carry deadly bites. Asking for help, when needed, and knowing it will come without strings attached. Catching a boat and going for lunch on the islands. Listening to music without worrying about what we might not hear around us – a thief, a snake, a threat. Christmas. Tradition. The company of those we love most. Treats, food, drink, joy all around. We do not question it. We take it for granted.
Time with family. Traditional food. Roast goat, cod, cheese, cured ham and bread. Portuguese sweets. Pleasant surprises. Love. Harmony. Safety. Simple. So good.
That particular Christmas, however, I was going through a difficult period. The hardest part of giving up alcohol is not the abstinence – it is breaking the habits. Abstinence can be managed with discipline and mental focus; the hardest part is the people. The places. The rituals. The traditions. The habits. It is the people. The people! Our people. If December smelled of family, that December, in particular, carried an intense and demanding influence from those who love me most and wish me well. It was truly difficult to make them understand that “just a small sip” is the same as awakening a sleeping devil. One does not play with the Devil. One simply does not. And they would feel offended when I said I would toast with water. My own. Our own. It was difficult. But looking back, I was strong.
The end of that year and the beginning of 2017 were devoted to travelling and enjoying time with my wife and our future daughter, Olívia. We travelled through central Portugal – Nazaré, Peniche, Santarém, Óbidos – we visited Quinta da Bacalhôa, Mértola, and, of course, the Costa Vicentina. Among many places, without hurry. We were “pregnant”, recovering, and nurturing a project we wanted to make thrive in our lives. I surfed warm waves, drove beautiful kilometres, took photographs, contemplated, and fully enjoyed our sunlit country in the best possible company. I reconnected with a good friend, my dear José Miguel Dias Pereira, who, sadly, is also no longer with us. We carried out works in our garden. We prepared the nest for our family’s future. We lived whatever each day gave us.
I miss those times, without time. I miss those times, “without” responsibilities. I miss those times that will never return. And Rute was always the best co-pilot. Smiling. Surprising. Simply being.
December and January foreshadowed what 2017 had in store. And I, smoking so many colourful cigarettes, could not clearly see the path unfolding ahead. Yet it was always there. Day after day.
At that time, my focus was on acquiring new clients. I was occupied with what I already had underway, but there was nothing that spoke to me from within; nothing that pushed me to do something new and uncomfortable; nothing that kept me awake at night. I distracted myself by tidying the office, hanging frames on the wall, painting the desk, and organizing papers. It was within the B16 brand that I wanted to channel my emotion. To convey what I knew how to do. With little success, truth be told.
It was in February that I received the opportunity to work with Infralobo. After a phone call, a proposal request by email, and some adjustments along the way, I was invited to an in-person meeting. At that meeting were three people who would change the course of B16 forever: Engineer José Miguel, Chairman of the Board of that municipal company; Dr Carlos Manso, Financial Director; and Cláudio Martins, director of Visualforma, one of the most important partners in implementing the project we were about to communicate.
I did not know Engineer José Miguel personally, but it was a pleasure to meet him – and to work with him. This meeting was the starting point, followed by several months in which we shared a common goal, until his later departure. From what little I knew, he seemed to be a person of great trust to the Mayor of Loulé and was therefore called upon for various fronts, one after another. He was at Infralobo for a short time – but long enough to leave a lasting mark.
Carlos Manso had been Financial Director during my time at Visualforma. We got along extremely well. He was engaging, serious, direct, and unifying. We shared several victories during that period. I learned a great deal from him – a great deal. I always admired him, both personally and professionally. I remember when he told us he was moving to Infralobo – his departure was felt. To mark his farewell, I created an internal email marketing campaign using the figure of the actor Brad Pitt. He will surely remember it, as do I and other former colleagues. We even held a formal farewell gathering among friends. Since then, we have remained in touch. It was Carlos Manso who established the contact and offered me the opportunity to go to Mozambique. I believe I mentioned that earlier. I owe him a great deal – I owed him even more at the time. What we did next, as I will explain, helped repay that debt.
Life is made of relationships – personal and professional. The sooner we learn that lesson, the sooner we understand that the most unlikely choice often leads to the most pragmatic solution. It is often the person we least consider who holds the answer. The stronger the relationships, the greater the chances of success. It truly is that simple. Today’s “friend” is tomorrow’s solution. And one must be mindful of this back-and-forth dynamic – what goes must return, and what comes must also go, if you understand what I mean.
And then, Cláudio Martins. I do not find it easy to speak about him in this context. It is difficult for me. Cláudio is a director of an international information technology company, with a significant share of the national market, operating in very specific sectors and, over the past 30 years, responsible for a considerable part of our country’s technological evolution. His company has achieved major milestones in innovation, and he is an integral part of that legacy. Cláudio was a colleague I met when I joined Visualforma. He was in sales; I was in marketing. Over time, we developed a professional friendship. There is a particular period I remember with great affection. I lived at Faro Beach. It was wonderful to leave home in a suit and tie and return in shorts and flip-flops. Beautiful moments. There were demanding workdays when we would leave the office late. I remember stopping by the supermarket and ending the day at the beach house, cooking good meals, drinking good wine, and contemplating the magic of the beach from sunset into the night. Wonderful gatherings. He says I always cooked the same meal – I do not recall that, I believe I varied things. I am not sure who is right. What I do know is that I remember those times as moments of pure happiness. We hosted dinners with colleagues and loved ones. We celebrated birthdays. We talked, laughed, and grew. Good times. That is why it is difficult for me to speak about Cláudio Martins. Behind an outstanding professional with a well-established status, there is such a genuinely good person that I am always cautious not to overstep – neither professionally nor personally. The truth is that Cláudio has been present throughout my journey. And in this context, it was he who invited B16 to take part in the technological solution implemented at Infralobo.
Thank you, Cláudio.
That meeting changed the path of B16 forever, because it was then that I understood my role within the agency. As I mentioned before, I do not have the technical skills to design, produce video, animation, photography, websites, newsletters, or specific deliverables of our trade. My role is to manage clients, projects, teams, objectives, the business itself, its strategic vision, to assemble the right teams for each challenge, and to maximise profitability, among other responsibilities. I have my aesthetic sense, my professional experience, my intuition – I know where to take things. But at that specific moment, I relied heavily on freelancers and colleagues such as Marcelo Souto and João Costa. And that is exactly what happened.
I walked into that meeting not knowing what to expect. I realised it was serious from everyone’s posture. I sat down and listened. I was given a briefing – concrete, yet abstract. I did not understand the emotion behind it all. To me, Infralobo simply wanted to organise an event and a communication campaign in record time to promote an application they had recently implemented. It seemed too “ordinary” to justify such enthusiasm. It was in that very meeting that someone said: “This is the world’s first smart resort,” and we want to communicate it as such. It felt strange to me.
My brother and I were still children when our mother was invited to work as secretary to Sander van Gelder, a Dutch figure whose reputation travelled the world at a time before the internet. He was the first to create a smart home in the Algarve. The concept of the smart house was introduced in Portugal by him – clapping to turn on lights, automated air conditioning, access control, pre-programmed alarms, whole-house audio systems, automatic gates – innovations that, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, were groundbreaking. Features that today are standard were, back then, headline news. Our mother was part of that team in the “Golden Triangle”, during a time of intense work and little time for family. The brand Vale do Lobo became ingrained in us as the place where our mother worked tirelessly and from where those extraordinary innovations emerged.
“The world’s first smart resort”? What did that even mean? In my mind, a smart resort had to be something far more advanced than Van Gelder’s smart house. But how? That was when I understood what was being implemented in that geographical area managed by Infralobo, in the municipality of Loulé. I was astonished by the technological solutions, the centralised Smart Room, the potential of that system – being implemented, tested, and used for the first time in the world. Fully operational. Some talk; others act. And there, it was being done.
At the Portuguese Catholic University where I studied, we often heard the phrase: “The Portuguese are capable of great deeds,” whether in Literature, History, History of Ideas, Art History, or Portuguese Culture. It is part of our national character. It is written in books. It is intrinsic to us. And without realizing it, I was sitting at a table with “Portuguese capable of great deeds”.
I intervened. I questioned. I tried to understand the project in its entirety. They took me to the Smart Room and gave me concrete examples of how everything worked in practice: field staff intervention tests, incident reporting by any resident, cameras, ratios, results, requests, needs, actions, tasks, responsibilities, consumption, routes – so much, all displayed across six large television screens and accessible at the click of a mouse. It was a technological solution combining multiple hardware and software systems which, in 2017, was as close as we had to robotics and artificial intelligence in a real-world setting.
I left Infralobo exhilarated. I had a mission: to work with Marcelo Souto and João Costa. The rest was still unclear in my mind. I needed to speak with them urgently – to contact them, to understand whether they were interested, and what lay ahead of us. How much money could I lose or gain from the process? How many days would it take? How would I execute it? A long list of unanswered questions. The project had arrived – the one I had been looking for. No time to execute it, but a strong desire to make it happen. And, on top of that, at a time when several other projects were already underway. If this had been the only client, time would still have been tight – but it was not. There were others. We delivered them all. Even those that were not going well.
By way of example, it was still in February that I delivered the corporate group solution for Prime Pass. After understanding the group’s reality and concept, and following many working meetings and research, we arrived at the following functional brand system.
It was also in February that I delivered the brand, stationery, and all supporting materials for Foz Clinic. I developed the brand with André Aleixo, along with stationery and several applications for the new clinic. It did not go as expected, but it was completed.
It was also in February that Kikas, our Boxer dog, had her litter of puppies, requiring emergency surgery. After a three-hour operation, Tofo, Dama, and Godzilla were born. We kept the first two and gave the third away. For those who may not know, when puppies are born and the mother does not produce enough milk, they must be bottle-fed every two hours for eight weeks… Kikas did not produce milk. And so it was for us. Between myself, my wife, my father, my brother, Isilda, and Tânia, we created shifts, schedules, and defined responsibilities.
It was also in February that Francisco Camilo created the Japanese temple graffiti at B16’s headquarters. He arrived one afternoon by train, directly from Santarém, and throughout the night, Luís Frederico and I stayed watching him build that piece, which transformed our office into a working temple where we felt truly at ease. It was painted directly onto the wall. Art for art’s sake. Later, when I left that office, it pained me deeply to paint over that beautiful work with white. But while I was there, it set the tone for what would later be considered our Zen Garden.
But more important than all of that, it was in February that I “batted ideas around” with Marcelo Souto to reach the final result of the Smart Resort by Infralobo brand. The construction of the concept, the form, the colours, the meaning, the narrative. Days and nights of hard work, from Faro to Japan, from Japan to Faro. Marcelo committed himself. I committed myself. At that time, there was no artificial intelligence. It was all done by hand. We carved every sentence, every line of reasoning, and everything was built with care and meaning. A piece of work we are immensely proud of. We thought of everything. The concept was built from scratch. In the years that followed – little did we know how many – the concept absorbed every need placed upon it, and the brand proved to have extraordinary elasticity. It still holds its ground today. It became timeless.
Days later, the “Portuguese capable of great deeds” loved our work. They congratulated us and asked for more. We began the saga of organising the event to present the “world’s first smart resort” to the world. We had an endless month of pre-production work: press relations, design production, team structuring, supplier contracting, speechwriting, scheduling, invitations and guest follow-ups, space decoration, and all the micro-tasks required for what would take place on 1 March 2017.
On 1 March, Infralobo changed the paradigm.
Together with João Costa, we organised, photographed, managed press relations, filmed, and built a range of post-event materials. Calmly, without rush, but with quality. We kept working. We kept sharing.
And the client gave us the confidence that this was only the beginning of a long-lasting relationship.
All of this, with a beautiful pregnant wife at home, bottle-feeding every two hours, and a car that insisted on giving us scares. It was March, and the year had only just begun.
I have always been someone who listens to intuition. Less so in the past – increasingly so in the present. At that time, for the first time, I understood that being a managing partner at B16 is about managing people. It is about seizing opportunities and executing them well. It is about creating concepts, strategies, content, and mechanisms to control progress. It is about maximising profitability in every challenge. It is about creating and documenting the story of those who trust us. For many years I had worked in communication, marketing, and advertising – and it was only here that I understood that, more than dedicating myself to causes, brands, or clients, my role in the world is to ensure that each opportunity generates consistent, real, differentiating, tangible results. It is about delegating creation to artists and allowing them to fly within the airspace defined by those who pay the bills. Intuition, a sense of mission, the joy of working in such a diverse field, the management of all resources, and the planning of a tailored personal and professional life – all of this began to take shape here. Today, I am who I am, and as I am, because of moments like this. With pride, joy, and a sense of duty fulfilled. The values of Bushido have never made so much sense as they do now. And who can explain to me that, back then, today’s truth was already beginning to reveal itself? Such is the nature of life – if we are willing to listen. Like birds that sing; flowers that grow before our eyes; the sky that speaks to our kind; nature that insists on defying scientific explanation; the enigma of the human body; the energetic force of the mind; the eternal philosophy of Being… To live. What a blessing.
