Burger King's Fernando Machado on His Favorite Ads and Creativity That Sells

From his classic work on Vaseline and Dove at Unilever to his years at Burger King, Fernando Machado has developed a well-earned reputation as one of the CMOs who truly values highly creative advertising—with a caveat. 

Creativity for its own sake—work that may be good for society, but in the end doesn’t sell the brand or its products—is a missed opportunity, Machado told Muse at Clio judging in Germany last month, where he served on the Brand jury. 

“I’ve seen lots of trends that I’m not excited about, to be honest with you,” he said. “I’m the client, right? One of them. So I’m always looking for stuff that helps me make the brand bigger, sell more stuff. I think there is a trend of forgetting that we are here to sell stuff, too.” 

Check out our “Creative Portraits” video with Machado below, in which he also picks his favorite recent and classic ads, and tells us about the biggest creative challenge facing BK today.