We recently connected with Emiliano Gonzalez Portino and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Emiliano thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Humans are animals with the ability to tell stories. It is through stories that we have been able to collaborate, create cultures, innovate, and achieve progress, leading to some of the world’s greatest inventions. Stories have allowed us to evolve faster than any other species. However, they have also generated some of society’s biggest problems, such as wars, fights, and conflicts.
Our personality and stability are largely determined by the stories we tell ourselves. We share stories with others, leading to the creation of shared narratives in the form of partnerships, couples, families, and friendships.
Given my background in strategy and storytelling, I feel a deep mission to create stories that bring people together and inspire them to envision a better future.
Business owners, nonprofits, and organizations start with a mission to make a meaningful impact. But everyday tasks can overwhelm and distract from that mission. It’s crucial to reconnect with your original story and align it with the people you serve. This connection creates a shared vision that inspires collaboration. There is also another challenge ahead, which is to actively dismantle divisive and prejudiced narratives. It is our duty to foster stories that unite rather than separate.
As a newly arrived immigrant in the US, I wanted to combine the strategic approach of my international career in advertising, TV, and advocacy campaigns, with my experience as a playwright and director. My experience showed me how storytelling inspires collaboration, fosters understanding and drives meaningful change. So I created The Brand Building Shop, a company dedicated to bringing people together by unlocking the universe of myths and stories within every organization willing to create a better future.
Emiliano, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I had an unconventional path, reinventing myself through a career that began in Biology, moved to Film School, and evolved into Playwriting and Stage Direction. To afford these studies, I got into advertising, building a career as a producer and collaborating with top film crews worldwide. This journey developed my unique combination of a strategic mindset and storytelling abilities, giving a distinctive twist to my professional approach. These qualities, combined with almost 15 years of freelancing between South America and Europe, led to a position managing the creative teams for Cartoon Network across the Americas. My curiosity about human insights drove me to explore Design Thinking and Human-centered Design for Social Impact.
Always seeking new challenges, I decided to open my own agency in my hometown, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Soon after starting this new venture, my son was born with an extra chromosome, opening a new adventure as the father of a child with special needs. Seeking better opportunities for his upbringing, we moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. This meant cutting off my career, emigrating, and starting from scratch in a country where I had no network, and where my strong English skills weren’t sufficient to work as a writer. Suddenly, my career and abilities seemed worthless in this new context. Without a US college degree, finding a job was challenging, and I faced the struggles of being an immigrant trying to prove his worth.
I refused to be defined by that story, and after a deep reflection, I realized I had one choice: reinvent myself. Again.
What did I have that could be transformed into something new?
A global mindset from my career, strategic experience at high levels, and deep knowledge of storytelling structures across different platforms. So I combined these elements and opened The Brand Building Shop, a Narrative Design agency helping change-makers.
Narrative Design, a term borrowed from the video game industry, involves creating the world in which a game takes place, allowing users to interact freely within a consistent environment. We apply this to organizations to create a brand universe that fulfills all their marketing needs while ensuring consistency across platforms.
The Brand Building Shop Services:
NARRATIVE DESIGN
Brand narratives and storylines that resonate with different target audiences.
Brand mythologies and storytelling structures.
Brand Architecture Storytelling, organizing storytelling ecosystems that interrelate all sub-brands with the main one.
BRAND STRATEGY AND CONSULTING
– Comprehensive brand audits.
– Strategic planning and positioning.
– Development of brand identity and guidelines.
DESIGN THINKING AND INNOVATION WORKSHOPS
– Customized workshops to foster creativity and problem-solving.
– Human-centered design approaches to drive innovation.
– Facilitation of collaborative sessions to align teams on strategic goals.
CONTENT DEVELOPMENT AND PRODUCTION
– Creation of engaging content across multiple media platforms.
– Storytelling through video, audio, and written content.
– End-to-end production services from concept to execution.
– Screenwriting
– Activations
Who Can Benefit:
Nonprofits and Social Impact Organizations seeking to amplify their message and connect with communities on a deeper level, leveraging storytelling to drive engagement and support.
Businesses with Diverse Offerings struggling to organize their various programs, products, or services into a cohesive brand system that optimizes communication and marketing efforts.
Companies Aiming for Growth and trying to break out of their traditional market, broaden their appeal to new audiences, and engage internal teams with fresh, inspiring visions.
Corporations Targeting Specific Audiences. They usually face challenges in connecting at a cultural level to create inclusive, resonant narratives that bridge gaps and foster understanding.
Our global team of strategists, writers, designers, and producers is equipped to work in over 20 languages, providing a full suite of services from strategy and design to digital and non-digital distribution. With a network built over more than 20 years in the creative industry, we are ready to help your organization tell its story and achieve its mission.
We want to unleash the fascinating universe of stories that are hidden behind everyday tasks and inspire audiences to build communities around the impact strategies that your organization is leading.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I believe every person and organization has a fascinating story waiting to be discovered. My mission is to find, unleash, and expand these stories, creating beauty out of chaos. Our role isn’t to “create” the story but to uncover, polish, and showcase it.
Once the story is found, I dig into the cultural context in which it exists, exploring mythologies and layers of interpretation that enrich its meaning.
Artists and creatives both master their crafts, but their approaches differ.
An artist creates from their own perspective, hoping it resonates with their audience.
A creative, on the other hand, connects deeply with the audience’s feelings, crafting something that each individual feels as their own perspective.
I strive to understand the hidden stories within people and identify the universal attributes that transform these personal narratives into those of a community.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
From a business perspective, the creative journey differs significantly from the traditional one. Traditional business strategy is logical, focused on measurable financial outcomes, often summarized in an Excel sheet.
Creative strategy, however, targets the emotional side of the audience, aiming to shift perspectives. While traditional strategy deals with costs and organizational control, building a brand focuses on what the audience feels. The primary goal of creative strategy is to transcend the current market and explore new opportunities that can be turned into business ventures.
One of my clients is a woman who produces organic soap bars inspired by the traditional uses of ingredients by native cultures. She was stuck in a cycle of minimizing costs and solving logistics issues, viewing her business strictly as a “soap business.”
But her true business was not about soap. It was about recovering “ancient wisdom for everyday life,”. This perspective opened the doors to producing not only soap but also shampoo, creams, aromatherapy products, and even cooking workshops. This expanded her business exponentially, creating multiple revenue streams.
She had a Universe that had to be unleashed. When that happened, her chances of doing business and making an impact grew exponentially.
The business answer is: “Creating a brand helps you avoid being a commodity. Through the shared stories you create, you increase your value in the eyes of your customers and expand their experience.”
But the most exciting part is putting a new Universe into play.
One that triggers everyone’s potential.
That heals old wounds or creates new perspectives.
That brings people together to envision better futures.
And it is already there, inside every person, inside every organization.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thebrandbuildingshop.com
- Instagram: @emiportino / @thebrandbuildingshop
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emiportino/ – https://www.linkedin.com/company/tbbs/?viewAsMember=true
Image Credits
Portrait photos by Carlos Soto.