20th ANNIVERSARY
KeyStart
2002/2022
"...doubt everything, find your own light"
Siddhartha Gautama
“Entrepreneur” is a word that I did not know in my childhood and youth, I possibly came across it at the end of my professional career but, even though the word was not on my radar, its concept was, I had grown up surrounded by entrepreneurs; my parents whom I admire, grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles and cousins, as well as friends and acquaintances.
This is how in university meetings, where very different topics of dubious interest but of high passion and conviction at the level of faith were tackled, I always found the right moment (and if not, I forced it) to declare: "That's why we will start an agency". Thus, if I spoke with my colleague “Dani Boy” speaking about the prostitution of the profession, I philosophized with Hernán Rod about our first rhetoric and semantic babble or with Rafa, Donovan and Vladimir we envisioned the pretext to maintain our friendship almost brotherhood beyond our alma mater, my phrase on many occasions ended: "That's why we will start an agency"
Teacher Margarita, without realizing it, but surely with the passion that has always characterized her, managed to fix an idea in my mind when we analyzed figures of rhetoric in advertising class: "in agencies, the conditions are created to exploit ideas." Our teacher and friend Vinicio Rochín surely heard us in one of those gatherings and possibly, although I must ask him, he perceived that enormous desire in me. So much so that a few days after opening the professional wings and with no more planning than the pause in which the waiter of the "Círculo Leonés" served us a round, he prepared a small document to agree on the birth of our "agency", his speach He filled me with emotion when he made us see our potential and, valuing our enthusiasm, he recommended that we put our feet on the ground, we signed the sheet and we toasted.
If the word “Entrepreneur” was unknown to me, “FreeLancer” even more so. However, since high school I had experienced unexpected situations, such as in yoga class (a practice that was recommended to me as "intense" at the age of 13, with a history of fights and "graphic expressions" on "forbidden" walls) my yogi the teacher Rosario saw my scribbled notebooks and asked me to "draw" a "logo" and some business cards for her yoga room. The money received was symbolic, but it helped me understand that this talent could repay me. Thus, from now on there was no lack of uncle Sergios, dentists, family grocery stores, my friends' tennis shoes that he "tuned", poster contests to win the lunches for the entire semester, the design of the graduation ring, the printed t-shirts that with their payments allowed me to cover a part of my school support and so many more.
Halfway through my career, my portfolio was already large; surely of poor quality, but with a lot of passion and drive. With this under my arm, in the seventh semester I ventured to find a way to practice and professionalize myself in a real agency. I really wanted to learn from the best and never imagined I would get to a place where I got to know all the different angles of an agency, both positive and negative. While ascending as chief designer of the agency, I continued with my friends/colleagues/partners to build with great enthusiasm and small actions an agency outside of office hours, sometimes in the utility room of our department, sometimes on the reel of cable found in the street that served as a makeshift table and the soda boxes that served as chairs.
The clients who trusted us were still friends and family, until one day one of our friends/colleagues contacted us with Omar, a young entrepreneur, whom I was lucky enough to meet and today I see as the most outstanding entrepreneur. It was he who began to ask us for minor developments for his personal entrepreneurial projects.
The talent of the FreeLancers team that we had, by coincidence, gathered in that service room opened the door for us to go from friends and family clients, to business clients who sought us out for the value of our work and recommendations.
In this way, the moment of encounter between talent and opportunity arrived. At Omar's request, we developed the “Mumbay” project, a nightclub concept that would be feasible with the investment of his friends, Josué and Christian. This project opened the way for us to enter their respective families' companies and thus we projected our talent on a group of young entrepreneurs with a vision of success while connecting with other young professionals who, like us, sought excellence in their work. . Our first joint venture worked out wonderfully with Monica's effective strategic marketing and Ivo's excellent taste and functional design in their splendid architecture.
The kick off day came: Josué visited me on the seventh floor of the apartment building on the corner of Compuerta street and Campestre Boulevard. We had developed a couple of brands for his children's footwear lines and his father, the founder, had been surprised. Josué informed me of his interest in associating with us with capital to create an agency. Boom! A bomb exploded in my mind and in my chest, as soon as I could I communicated it to Rafa, Vladimir, Donovan, Dago and Jorge, whom I always counted on to materialize that dream.
Our agency was born in idea. To materialize it, we set up the partnership, we rented a space on the second floor of a new building on the corner of Paseo del Moral street and Insurgentes Boulevard, and we resigned from the agency that taught us so much. It was time to do it on our own. February 20, 2002 is marked as one of the most important dates on my calendar. I had finally erected the place to create, the ideal space for ideas, the perfect atmosphere for creativity: CREATOSFERA (creatos-admosphere)
As emerging entrepreneurs, we made several mistakes, we put our resilience and above all our code of ethics to the test. Dago, Jorge and I showed our potential. This foray took us on a journey as partners of 1 1/2 years, discovering for the first time the importance of maintaining a healthy and satisfied management. We work with national brands such as Dogi footwear, Rezza book publishing company, Eescord and Reyma Group, just to mention a few.
By the end of 2003 the foundations had been laid to continue on our own. Determined to develop a management and quality system, we ground processes, structure an organization chart, draft contracts, design formats and more. We rent a house on Compuerta street in Jardines del Moral. Paco, Jorge's brother and an excellent industrial engineer, joined the team and helped us systematize and perfect the strategic approach of the new agency, an agency that had understood the value of semantics in communication, that understood signs and furrowed, we were SIGNAUTAS.
The recommendations grew and therefore the responsibility, everything was an adventure, a roller coaster that made Paco seek greater stability and development in his specialty. We attended national projects, supporting small ideas that today are great achievements such as the Life Beau plastic surgery clinic, Animare Animal Foundation, Don Camarón Restaurant, Don Bizcocho, but we also ventured into international developments such as Vize Group, Aventec (today Hirotec) and Chocolate Cafe.
We made an effort to get ahead, consolidate our agency project, giving everything in each project. Our loved ones were involved with our project and helped us in whatever they could, so we will fondly remember those who left and who in one way or another contributed their grain of sand. Jorge our friend would suffer the loss of his dear wife Norma, rip, and would have to separate from the project leaving a great void.
We began to integrate people into our team, friends like Ray and collaborators who would later be key players like Carlos. We had managed to consolidate a series of accounts that gave us the opportunity to do social work and participate in contests, which led us to win our first tender for an advertising campaign and gave us the opportunity to present the Santini footwear brand for its season. Autumn Winter. We also won the competition for the image of the León National Book Festival, integrating the entire communication and dissemination system of the festival, as well as an Aventec tender that gave us the opportunity to create international material in three languages for a General Motors supplier company. with Japanese, American and Mexican capital.
By 2004 we were still evolving and it was time to make the leap to executive offices, a corporate space that would give us the opportunity to project ourselves in the congruence of a creative agency. We evolved our brand and synthesized what we knew how to do best: create ideas. We were consubstantial to them and we needed a brand that represented it, that's how IDEAX came about.
We moved to the first floor of the business and commercial complex of the Hotel Fiesta Americana (today HS Hotsson), where we integrated Rox, one of our best talents. Thanks to a strategic vision of diversification, in 2005 we managed to set up a second company specializing in Below The Line or BTL techniques, the ZER Agency, which gave us the opportunity to work for prestigious international brands such as Corona beer, Sol beer, Marlboro and Herradura tequila.
In addition, with the registration with the government and municipality, it was possible to integrate us into projects of the municipal and state administration. In the same institutional sphere, we won another tender before the Electoral Institute of the State of Guanajuato to create the campaign for citizen participation in the national and local elections of 2006.
That year showed us how the economy is affected by politics and that businessmen are divided into risky and prudent. We began to plan the possibility of creating a series of services that would strengthen us during that time. At that time we supported the first casino in the city of León called Egyptian with the image and we continue to support national projects such as Via Libera, the Guanajuato tourism campaign “What You Live Makes History” and companies such as Ozynix that supported us. to conquer the catwalks of Las Vegas.
Always close to those who believed in us from the beginning, I approached Omar and Óscar who were inaugurating their new offices on Universidad Avenue and, after several casual encounters, they finally gave us the opportunity to talk about their Cantinita and Barezzito fun concepts. and the need to turn their communication around. This is how Impulza Group once again entered our triple A client portfolio. This led to the integration of a broader team, involving new friends and even family, highlighting Juan and my sister, Karina.
Sustained growth was unleashed for both Impulza Group and Ideax, which was already serving projects that came from all over the country, managing advertising campaigns on national television such as Televisa and TVAzteca for brands such as GreenField of a beloved and daring businessman who one day told us: “ Without hesitation, you are the most disruptive agency I know, you are the best.” This is how we support his visionary projects like Armat.
We continue to support entrepreneurs such as Atomic Blue Jeans, Carnitas Vicente, Hule Audio, Salamandra and creating new entertainment concepts such as Quiero Trendy Bar and La Puerta de Alcalá, as well as the remake of the Cantinita brands in their La Cocinita and La Canelita versions and their for the CDMX of La Chilanguita. We served approximately 25 business units with a focus on food and beverages. On the other hand, we shaped a new business for the construction of commercial spaces called Area D, with which we created store concepts such as those of Via Libera and Torito Paz.
Until that point we had functioned as a natural person, however, with the advice of strategic experts and the new knowledge acquired in business strategy, we decided that it was time to formalize the legal entity. In 2009 we created Ideax Grupo Creativo SC to meet the tactical demands of our agency.
Given its demand, the Impulza Group invited us to take advantage of its corporate facilities and work in-house in order to cover its growth. We took them at their word and by 2010 we were officially installed in the corporate building, we had twenty-one collaborators and employees, we covered developments throughout Mexico and the southern United States.
To take the next strategic step, I started training in a business incubator called ProEmpleo, a social franchise that would be my home for the next 4 years and gave me the opportunity to learn about the entrepreneurship ecosystem of incubators and support schemes of the Ministry of Federal Economy. We became advisors to companies and ventures of the IncuBajiío, IncuVen and ProEmpleo incubators, as well as the Innovation and Business Centers of Tec de Monterrey and LaSalle Bajío.
In this ecosystem, we developed brands for more than 50 companies and gave more than one support for their acceleration, such as Kiin Energy, which we encouraged to venture into selling its solar panels at Sam's Club or Goin, a app that we help to reach Silicon Valley with a first world image.
Likewise, we founded a new agency that we had planned due to the economic contraction of the 2006 election year: VOX POPULI. We got our first client to run for the popular election for the Presidency of the Administration from 2012 to 2015 of the Municipality of Dolores Hidalgo CIN, Gto. We generated a political trends research system that guided us in the best strategy to follow for the creation of graphic and audiovisual communication content, with which we achieved that our candidate will win the elections with 46% of the votes, 6 percentage points higher than he had estimated.
Ideax competed in the tender for an agency to create the lines for the communication management of the three years of administration of the new municipal government and we won. In addition, at that time we worked with Dharmalife in the creation of its brand of cosmetic products based on collagen and its launch in large chains of the distribution sector, such as Farmacias del Ahorro at the National level and Sanborns. At the same time, we generated the strategy of the basketball franchise of the city of León, integrated into the National Basketball League, recommending the creation of a new brand called Titanics that had an impact on the market for said sport at a national level.
This growth gave colleagues/friends the confidence to join the business field and carry out joint collaborations, becoming associates of the agency, integrating collaborative projects such as those of the Fynso group with Sushi tai, Itacate and Sato, as well as Coloso, shoes for children. Hugo and Vladimir raised the agency's professional profile with an outstanding track record. The agency had an administrative area controlled by Maki, a sales department made up of Ale and Carmen, a marketing department with Karen and Lucía, a communication area and a solid and creative design cell.
But the sirens sang to us and we succumbed to the temptation of dividing the agency in two, the one that my partner recommended to hold the entire load of the Impulza group and the cell that would serve the other group of clients, which I should lead, was a wrong strategic decision. that my efforts could not prevent.
In 2014 we created the Ideax Green concept on León Avenue where we adopted 80 square meters of green areas with a natural pond and with a permaculture philosophy we managed to promote the agency. Players magazine ranked us three consecutive years as one of the 5 best agencies in the region, we served corporations and national chains, our work reached Asia, Europe and North America internationally, by then we had already developed more than four hundred brands in our trajectory and we began to strengthen our digital services.
We get involved in global strategies, supporting, for example, a conglomerate of 20 companies in the fuel sector with a gas station group of more than 60 stations for whom we designed a commercial strategy to increase their sales by 12%. The tactic was successful. At the end of the relationship, one of the most solid corporations, with 9 gas stations, sought us out to continue with the strategies. This is how we created the TopGas brand that was ready to face the imminent opening of the country's energy sector, managing to consolidate a total of 14 gas stations.
On the other hand, the Radiorama Bajío broadcasting consortium entrusted us with the construction of the brand of its different radio concepts, including the legendary 101.5 Éxtasis Digital. The strongest seafood distributor in the region asked us to develop its line of premium products to venture into self-service stores with the Triton brand and the Nutrinuts brand with a presence in Sam's Club and Costco and the development of its line of sesame-based products. to impact the field of healthy products on the shelves of shopping centers, self-service and specialized points of sale.
By then the agency worked more with the remote model, we had reinforced ourselves with solid talents such as Idalí Master of Arts with a great aesthetic and conceptual understanding; each collaborator worked in his house in different cities. At that time we signed the largest project and the most complex challenge in which we have been involved so far. With a reach that goes from Central America and the Caribbean through all of Mexico, the south and center of the United States: the Bravos de León professional national baseball team. It took us 3 years to break all our records.
We develop the best brand of the Mexican Baseball League, in the voice of sports fans. We went from a 12% brand positioning to 70% in less than 3 months, launching not only the brand, but also promoting the star players, their uniforms, the preseason, the opening games and the venue we position with its new name created by the agency as La Fortaleza, thereby guaranteeing a full house in the three games of the inaugural series and achieving an engagement of 80% of its followers in less than 2 months. At the end of the first season and according to the metrics of the United States Major League Baseball or MLB, of which the Mexican Baseball League is a subsidiary, the Bravos de León were awarded for having the best digital strategy in the league national.
In 2019 the pandemic hits all companies and we observe a paradigm shift, as strategic advisors we like to have a thermometer in business and economic behavior, this health crisis would break decades-old prejudices in the world of digital marketing where we We already had more than 10 years of experience.
In this way, in 2020, thanks to a Voluntary Public Offering (OPA) process, the capitalization was achieved that led us to launch a new concept, with a unique vision but with global experience. A company with creative comprehensive communication solutions based on a strategy that reinvents optimal and accessible solutions designed only for irreverent companies and entrepreneurs!
In this company we have the key to start your business project, with a history of 20 years in KEYSTART we are proud of our journey, welcome!
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