By Pancho Dondo
Editor in Chief of Marketers by Adlatina
How did the idea of acquiring Argentina’s Niña come about in an agency headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States?
Dooley Tombras: We are a family agency with five offices in the United States and the fantasy of becoming the best independent agency in the world. The agency was founded by my grandfather, Charles Tombras Senior, in 1946, and continued by my father, Charles Tombras Junior, who is now 83 years old and still goes to the agency daily. For an independent agency like ours, the logical idea for international expansion would have been to target Europe, obviously. But a year ago we hired Avi as executive creative director of the New York office and he asked me, on his first day of work: “Have you ever thought about opening an office in Argentina?”
Was it a completely unexpected question for you?
DT: Not really. It is true that I had never thought about opening an office here in Buenos Aires. But Argentina had been very present in the history of our agency. First of all, because both my grandfather and my father came to Patagonia a lot to fish. And secondly, because our chief technology officerwho had joined a year earlier, was —and still is— the Argentine Juan Tubert, who was part of the opening of the Argentine office of R/GA. Juan, on his first day at work, had asked me the same question: “Have you ever thought about opening an office in Argentina?” At that moment the subject had settled in my head. And when Avi asked me the same thing, I answered: “We have to do it.”
Baliga, where did this proposal come from, perhaps not totally unexpected, but certainly unusual?
Avinash Baliga: I had come to Argentina straight from my native India, drawn by its rich creative advertising tradition. I arrived in July 2011, joined the agency Madre as a copywriter, and five years later, I left as creative director and went to work in agencies in New York: first Barton Graf, then Mother, and finally Maximum Effort, until I arrived at Tombras in June 2023. In Argentina I had found exactly what I was looking for, an incredible creative wealth, and from the moment I arrived in the United States I did nothing but wonder how best to integrate that wealth with the structure and ambition of American agencies: it sounded like the perfect combination. That’s why I proposed the idea to Dooley… and he bought it immediately.
How was the first contact between the two agencies?
Gonzalo Vecino: Pretty incredible. In December of last year I was in New York for the Clio Sports Awards, where we were receiving a statuette for Under Armour, and I was contacted by Tombras. Avi had worked at Madre with Luciano Landajo, our CEO: that’s where the contact came from. I looked at the address of the New York office and it was just six blocks from my hotel. So we met right away!
Was it an old ambition for Niña that has just come to fruition with the sale?
GV: Not at all! It was not something we had ever thought about. We were rather wondering whether to follow the usual path of opening an office in Mexico, which everyone does these days. But when Tombras’ proposal came up, we listened to it and quickly said to ourselves: “Why not?” The understanding was almost instantaneous.
It sounds like the story of a match from a dating app.
GV: (Laughter) Exactly! But here the quest was much more theirs than ours: Dooley is the truly ambitious person in this story. We are trying to copy his level of ambition, but we can’t quite get there!
How old is Niña —from now on, TombrasNiña—, how many people work at the agency and what do you imagine from now on?
Pablo Alvarez Travieso: Twelve years ago, we founded it in 2012, and we are 55 people. We think that this is a huge opportunity to access projects of another scale, especially in terms of the service that we can offer here in Argentina and throughout the region. Because with Tombras we will have the great variety of services that they have offered for years. They have a truly incredible team. We think it is the opportunity to put Argentina back in the center of the scene. Yesterday, in one of the meetings we had, the CCO of Tombras, Jeff Benjamin, said it very simply: “Together we can be better; let’s not doubt it, let’s do it.” That’s what we are doing.
Dooley Tombras, the profile that your agency has had since you took over its leadership a little less than a decade ago is very much geared towards effectiveness. In fact, you trained in planning. Does that imply that the new focus of TombrasNiña will also be in that direction? My question is not a coincidence: we are in the days when Ascential, the group that owns Cannes Lions, announced the purchase of the Effie Awards.
DT: Absolutely, that’s the case. But we’ve spent years repositioning the agency in the exact middle point between creativity and effectiveness. Connecting data and creativity with business results is key for us.
Clients
The previously named Niña has been working for Disney, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Under Armour, Bacardi and Banco Patagonia, among other accounts. The brand new TombrasNiña will keep that same portfolio and will add several of the clients that Tombras works with in the United States: BMW Motorrad, ESPN, Firefox, FritoLay, Newell Brand, SunChips, Pernod Ricard, Re/Max, Rolls Royce and Rubbermaid, among others.
