Barcelona, November 21st, 2019

With offices in Barcelona, Medellin, Bali and Rotterdam, achos! has gone a long way since it started in 2013.

The agency defines itself as a creative lab, escaping routine and dedicating as much time as possible to experiment and investigate each project. This has allowed it to grow and expand quickly over the last years.

A large part of that growth has been thanks to Benjamin Barber, who started the agency with David Ortega. In an interview with TIA, Barber reflects on his career path and the evolution seen by achos! since its beginning. At the same time, Barber looks at future projects and at his main influences and goals.

What are the key experiences that have brought you to where you are today?

Starting our own creative agency from scratch with very little previous experience pushed us into a direction that we didn’t know that was possible. We had little to no clients and we started creating personal projects to keep ourselves busy while we did our internships and long hours of work.

In our free time and on our lunch breaks, we started making quirky little ideas to catch people’s attention and this was the key element to creating a personal style of communication. This resulted in a fresh way of doing and thinking that we wouldn’t have been able to reach if we started working for other agencies and adopted their ways.

What are the moments you most value of a regular day at the office?

Coming up with ideas for projects. The good thing about this part is that it allows us to escape the office for a bit. Going for a walk helps, going for lunch is a good conversation starter. We don’t think the best ideas appear in a closed meeting room. You need some distance to let your mind wander.

Can you describe the evolution seen by the agency from when it began to now? What changes has it experienced?

It’s been a natural evolution, what we had clear from the start is that if the size of the company grew too fast and so did the workload, we wouldn’t be able to maintain the same quality of work. That’s why we decided to partner up and collaborate with the best professionals we could find, and this is reflected in each project.

The main shift achos! has seen in the past 5 years is how we rapidly grew the international reach of the agency. We have successfully managed to create a network of collaborators around the world and to do so we have travelled with the agency for the past 3 years to set up strategic locations and now 80% of our projects are from abroad.

You have offices in several and diverse cities. How do you coordinate the work among all of them?

Up to date we have implemented a variety of digital tools that make our lives easier to organize and work on the same projects from different places. We believe we’re privileged. Our philosophy is clear, we understood that if we controlled 3 different regions on the map, we could keep the projects running for a longer period of time. When one region shuts down the others take over. Basically, keep the ball moving as long as possible.

What are the key elements of the company’s philosophy?

Team Work: Together we are better
Fun: We don’t work, we do what we love
Respect: Do not touch your colleagues’ girlfriends/boyfriends

How do you help a new employee to understand it?

They are the ones that help us understand and strengthen the values of achos!

What are the upcoming projects at the agency that you are looking forward to?

Finding Mary: Graphic Identity and communication for Finding Mary, an App that helps you find cannabis dispensaries and that provides a management software for dispensaries.

Reprieve: Identity and social media communication for Reprieve, an NGO that help people who suffer extreme human rights abuses at the hands of the world’s most powerful governments.

ADG FAD: The communication campaign for the 50th edition of the national design awards here in Spain.

What’s the agency’s approach towards fulfilling the goals and projects of its employees?

The meaning behind the name achos! is muchachos. In Spanish, this means young person, dude or kiddo! and is an expression from the south of Spain. We’re a family where we try to help each other, we all fight some way or another to be better for each other and that is our biggest goal. Help each other, help the people of our surroundings and leave a better world than what we received.

What is something that people would be surprised to learn about you?

That we don’t take drugs and that we’re vegan. Can you believe it?

Who has been the biggest influence on your work to date?

Pornhub is one of them, every year they upload a new piece of communication. We love the concept and the narrative. I guess it’s because they have so much creative freedom and it’s such a flexible topic that they really push it to the max. We would love to have that same freedom with our client work, and this motivates us to generate personal works.

If you could go back to the future and give yourself a piece of advice, what would it be?

Don’t worry too much & don’t accept candy from strangers.

Thanks Ben!

Learn more about achos!

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