Bryan Garcia Martin Cerri
Upstreamers is a hybrid business model between a consultancy and an ad agency that seeks to boost client growth by closing the gap between upstream and downstream marketing. The company is led by Martín Cerri, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Strategist, and Bryan García, Co-Founder and Chief Business Strategist. “We believe in a more collaborative model in which the person in charge of creativity must also be well-grounded in strategy, and vice versa. The roles we define for ourselves are different from what you’d find in a traditional agency,” Cerri told PRODU. Upstreamers was founded as a 100-percent independent entity, Cerri said, because they saw how much clients need “more of a big-picture view that is not so tactical, not so related to execution – that’s why our model is more of a hybrid.” He recalled that current statistics show that a number of clients have migrated to in-house agencies over the past few years. “That means clients have covered the more tactical side and what is related to execution, but they lack a more holistic vision of the business, a more objective vision. So that’s where we come in and what we believe will be the future of the industry. In other words, that’s what clients will need more of from us.”