Juries 2024 / President 2024
Luis Miguel Messianu
Luis Miguel Messianu has played a respectable and influential role in the most important developments in the U.S. multicultural market during an advertising career that spans three decades. Born to Romanian parents and raised in Mexico City, he has worked in both the Latin American and U.S. Hispanic markets. His professional trajectory is defined by a conscious effort to help pioneer the melding of marketing niches into a nuanced and evolving market. His award-winning work for multinationals such as McDonald’s, State Farm Insurance, Clorox, MolsonCoors, Sprint, Pepsi, among others, is a testament to that effort. Luis Miguel Messianu is an innovator, a mentor, and an example followed by many distinguished professionals in the multicultural marketing community.
Luis Miguel had the foresight to target this vast and untapped market. In 1994 he started his own Hispanic agency, winning soon after the McDonald’s and State Farm Insurance accounts. Twenty nine years and numerous award-winning campaigns later, both clients still trusted their multicultural strategy to Luis Miguel’s previous creative shop, called alma. alma is a modern culture marketing agency known for highly effective, award-winning segment-led creative campaigns, with a broad roster of clients, including McDonald’s, MolsonCoors, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, CVS Health, Google, State Farm and others. Under his watch the agency fueled exceptional business growth through creativity, earning 35 Cannes Lions and 27 Effie Awards, as well as numerous Radio Mercury, One Show, Clio, ANA, and New York Festival Awards. alma was named to Ad Age’s prestigious A-List seven times and earned “Agency of the Year '' titles from El Ojo, El Sol, and FIAP.
In 2015, ADCOLOR named Luis Miguel Legend Honoree in celebration of his achievements in diversity through his career, and in 2016 he was selected as juror for the Radio Category at the Cannes Lions Advertising festival, he was invited back in 2022 as a juror for the Sustainable Development Goals category. In 2019 he was inducted into the CMC Advertising Hall of Fame, one of the highest recognitions in the multicultural industry.
He has always been passionate about mentoring and educating a new generation of Multicultural advertising professionals, and has been a member of the Miami Ad School Board and faculty since the school's inception. He is a professor at the School of Communications at the University of Miami. Luis Miguel was also one of the founders of the US Hispanic Creative Circle more than two decades ago, was elected its first President.
He completed with honors his Executive MBA at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership.
From February 2022 to July 2023, he was DDB’s Global Chief Creative Officer for the McDonald’s account. Messianu oversaw the creative output of the McDonald’s brand across 46 markets, where the DDB network is responsible for the account. He split his time between his role as Founder and Chairman of alma and the global position within DDB for McDonald’s.
In June 2023 he left DDB and alma, the agency he founded,and launched a Multicultural Creative Content Consultancy under the name “Included” going back full circle as a creative entrepreneur who really loves to build cultures and companies from scratch. Soon after he engaged in conversations with Pete Lerma and Richard Edelman, who wanted to partner with him, which in turn are now giving birth to MEL. This new Latino Earned Media enterprise will allow him to recommit to his personal and professional mission of helping dignify and elevate the presence of Latinos in the U.S.