Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Stefanie Salguero Say. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Stefanie , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

My mind was always a little bit different. I would overanalyze some things, and completely disregard others. This was, of course, extremely difficult when I became a teenager and school was a priority. It is safe to say I was not a very good student, but I won’t lie and say I tried my best either, I really didn’t. Pain-stacking as it was for my teachers and family, I was in love with my little bubble and fell completely enamored with nature – Colors. Textures. My passion for photography grew over the years, especially in capturing details with a macro lens. This to me was mind-blowing. The infinite details these contained. How colors bounced off these infinitesimal sections like little ingredients.

Naturally, I started developing a fascination with photography and art. If I did not have my camera on me (at the time I didn’t have a smartphone with an incredible camera built in) I would take a “mind picture” and draw it afterward. I wasn’t exactly great at representing what my eyes could see but the feeling it conveyed was enough for me.

I knew from a young age a creative profession was the one for me. But I had no clue which one it would be. If you had asked me at age 15, I would’ve said: I want to be a photographer.

I explored photography immensely; the swirling, blurred colors you could get by long exposure… but I was even more wowed by the works of the great Ansel Adams. I adapted his full tonal range into my photography. Black and White, high contrasting images with a little twist from a macro lens, and some long exposure here or there.

At the time I thought. This is it. This is what I want to spend my whole life doing… but something was amiss. When I would go through my photographs, I would always have music on, and the lyrics in some particular songs would resonate perfectly with the emotion of the image. So, I started connecting the dots.

Words. Emotion. Imagery.

That’s how I knew. I knew that an image could be beautiful, but words could be extraordinary.

I completed my studies at the Miami University of Art and Design, with a BA in advertising whilst I learned something I knew so well – how the psychology of words and imagery can go hand in hand.

I was working as a creative at a company in Miami. As it was my first “real” job in this sector, I had many roles. But I quickly knew I only wanted one role. To be a copywriter.

I completed my master’s in copywriting and came back to the country where I had been born – Madrid, Spain. Whilst in Madrid, I freelanced for companies all over the world who needed a push into the world of digital marketing. I got a job as a clickbait writer – yes, those articles you see online where we spin the tale a thousand different ways, so you keep clicking onto the next slide, and the next, and the next… it was very fun to create these spins I do have to admit even though it was so totally wrong. I mean, it’s entertaining but come on, you could write the whole story in one paragraph, but we stretched it out to 15… it’s pretty impressive… A lot of these articles were published on different sites and when they would pop up, I would giggle to myself. I was leading my readers into an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole and some of them were very popular, but I knew I didn’t want to do this forever and that these odd jobs here or there were great, they were incredible experiences… but I was waiting… I was waiting for my chance to get into the world of advertising.

I started working at a leading global advertising agency: McCann, in their digital department, MRM as a copywriter. I absolutely loved it. I had the amazing opportunity to work with incredible brands and create wonderful campaigns.

During my time at McCann, I got headhunted and offered a job at VMLY&R. My uncle, Jeffrey Salguero, had been a VP Executive Producer at Young & Rubicam for many years, then he became the VP of Global Advertising for Colgate. I am and was undoubtedly in awe of his professional career so when the newly merged Y&R group contacted me, I pounced.

Even better, the account I was to work on at VMLY&R was for a tobacco company. My grandfather, Carlos Salguero Munar, was the president of Phillip Morris Region 5 (Latin America Iberia), Executive VP of Phillip Morris International, and VP of Phillip Morris incorporated.

It seemed like this was a full-circle opportunity that was in my genes, and to this day I am still at VMLY&R working under the great Manir Fadel (CCO of VMLY&R Spain) and Adrian Rios (ECD of VMLY&R Madrid) fully passionate, motivated and happy to see what greatness we can come up next.

Stefanie , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Words to me are absolutely beautiful, and the psychology behind them fascinates me every single day. But something that usually flies under the radar when it comes to copywriters is that our jobs are not just words. We think of the bigger ideas, of the concepts that answer to a particular brief a client delivers, and then that’s when the magic happens – to think. To connect things. That is our true work.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

As a creative, your own work is very personal. It’s your own emotions, logical thinking, experience… Sometimes, it doesn’t align or work within a specific project, and that’s when you must take a step back, assess it from a different perspective and mold yourself to that.

It’s happened to me a couple of times. A brief was introduced, I get to working on the concepts and overall ideas of how we could answer it, but most of the ideas get turned down because they don’t answer the brief in a specific way.

It is sometimes really hard to sculpt yourself into something you think would work best. Sometimes you fail, sometimes it works out great. But in this field, It’s important not to let yourself be discouraged, and it always helps if you can bounce your ideas off with a colleague or boss so they can help guide you.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

There is probably many, but one big one I can think of is the fact that in a creative journey, no answer is wrong. Something led you to that, an underlying insight, an emotion, a visual… something was there that made you think “This is good, I like this”, so keep working on that, even if something is amiss you can double back and create something exceptional from the initial thought process.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.stefaniessay.com
• Instagram: stefaniessay
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefaniesalguero/

Image Credits
Art Basel 2014 Exhibition Miami