As part of its XXVII edition, the International Festival El Ojo de Iberoamérica 2024 launches the third edition of the Latin Talent Hall of Honor. José Miguel Sokoloff, president MullenLowe Global Creative Council, a leading figure in Latin and global creativity, is one of this year’s honourees.

The Latin Talent Hall of Honor is a space to pay tribute to those leaders who were part of these 27 years of encounters, inspiration and recognition and who contributed to build a relevant, integrated and outstanding Latin creative industry in the world.

After the tributes to Marcello Serpa and Agulla & Baccetti in 2022 and to Toni Segarra and Ana María Olabuenaga in 2023, the festival is now preparing to pay tribute to Colombian José Miguel Sokoloff.

José Miguel Sokoloff finds his creative sweet spot at the intersection of art, culture and running. As a leader, he is not afraid to experiment with ideas and narratives that go beyond the boundaries of conventional advertising and communication. Predictability is not his style. He has travelled the world, observing and absorbing creative culture while mentoring talent from around the globe. Jose Miguel’s brilliant mind and sense of humour make him a beloved leader of MullenLowe Creative Council and someone you always want to reserve a seat at the table for.

José Miguel was born in Medellín but grew up in Bogotá, where he was educated from a young age until he finished Business Administration at C.E.S.A. He then joined Leo Burnett agency as an intern in the media department, cutting press to make the ‘competition reports’. All day long, he was surrounded by ads of all categories that Leo Burnett’s clients and their competitors were doing. The joy he got from finding the occasional fun, well-written or well-designed ad, made him dream of being one of the creatives who created those ads that stood out from the rest. So he was given the opportunity to become a junior copywriter at Leo Burnett. Four years later he was appointed vice president general creative director, where he led the creation of iconic campaigns for clients such as Postobón, Nacional de Chocolates, Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark and Davivienda, launching their famous ‘wrong place’.

In 1996, together with Francisco Samper, Humberto Polar and Rafael Mora, they created their own agency, SokoloffSamperPolarMora, later SSP3. The agency quickly took first place in creativity and became one of the three largest agencies in the market in less than three years, a position it has held ever since. In El Ojo de Iberoamérica, he was named Best Agency of Colombia in 1999, an award he would win again in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. As a creative, José was elected Best of Colombia in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007, contributing to the Lowe network being consecrated in 1999 and 2002 as Best Iberoamerican Network at the Festival. This achievement was repeated with MullenLowe under his global creative leadership in 2018.

In 2002, he became the first Latin American to join the Creative Council of the Lowe network. And already in 2011, he was appointed president of the global creative council of the Lowe and Partners network to which SSP3 belonged, becoming the first Colombian to lead the creativity of a global network.

For 10 years he created messages to encourage the demobilisation of FARC members, achieving with his teams the demobilisation of 18 thousand guerrillas. The most successful campaign in terms of awards was ‘Rivers of Light’, which sent messages from citizens inviting demobilisation inside luminous balls across the river, awarded with El Gran Ojo Vía Pública in 2012, which marked the continuance of ‘Operation Christmas,’ also winner of the Gran Ojo Directo in 2011. To these two GPs, in 2018 he added the Gran Ojo Directo for ‘Mi Línea’ for the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications / Google Colombia, a campaign that was recognised with the GP of Innovation in Cannes that same year. His unprecedented work for the Colombian Ministry of Defence helped end decades of conflict and set a standard for doing creativity for good, before it became a trend. With ‘Rivers of Light,’ he won the Black Pencil, recognised as the best campaign of the decade by the D&AD Festival.

As a speaker at El Ojo he presented keynote speeches such as ‘La publicidad ya te cambió la vida, ahora tú cámbiasela a alguien’ (Advertising has already changed your life, now you change someone else’s), in 2011, and in the 2020 edition of El Ojo, which was held virtually for the first year of pandemic, he shared the conference entitled ‘Publicidad en tiempos de COVID’ (Advertising in times of COVID). José Miguel took part as a Titanium Jury at Cannes 2013 and led numerous industry juries, among them he was jury president of El Ojo Radio in 2011, president of Outdoor at Cannes 2014, President of El Ojo Vía Pública in 2017 and in 2019, and president of Radio & Audio at Cannes in 2019.

His work transcended regional boundaries and has merited worldwide attention. Sokoloff has spoken at TED Global and has been featured on shows such as CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ and NPR’s This American Life. He was the cover of LatinSpots’ 149th issue, with an in-depth interview in which he revealed his unmatched creative and business acumen.

Today, in addition to being chief creative officer and chairman of the Worldwide Creative Council of MullenLowe and other IPG Holding agencies, he is also the global president and chief creative officer of the Unilever account for IPG.

José knows, and repeats time and again, that creativity is the most powerful tool to drive change. And El Ojo de Iberoamérica will celebrate the night of November 14th all the changes that his creativity has managed to develop for brands and for his own country, taking him to the Latin Talent Hall of Honor, as part of its XXVII edition. That same day in the afternoon, José Miguel will share his vision within the framework of the festival’s conferences.