September, 2026.- Rodrigo Rodrigues has held strategic positions across agencies, media owners, and clients—at Africa Creative, Eletromidia, and OOH Brasil. The main lesson he has learned from working across different parts of the media and communications ecosystem is that we are often looking at the same problem from completely different perspectives. Moving across these perspectives taught him to ask a fundamental question: “Why are we doing this?”
In this interview, Rodrigues discusses why OOH is living the biggest transformation in its history. Digitalization has transformed inventory. Programmatic is transforming the way media is bought. Data is reshaping planning and measurement. All of this evolution has helped create a market that now accounts for 14.8% of total media investment in Brazil. Paradoxically, however, he believes OOH’s greatest value lies precisely in the fact that it still happens in the “real world.”
Rodrigues also reflects on the difference between being exposed to a message and actually paying attention to it. Historically, media has focused heavily on opportunities to see: audience, circulation, impressions, frequency. But neuroscience adds a layer that comes before all of them: Did the brain actually register the stimulus? The insight that has most changed the way he thinks is understanding that visibility does not necessarily mean attention.
On AI, Rodrigues notes that its biggest value today doesn’t come from one spectacular application. It comes from AI’s ability to amplify human intelligence and productivity. But there is one thing AI still can’t do on its own: exercise judgment. That is why he doesn’t see this as human intelligence versus artificial intelligence. He sees it as human intelligence amplified by artificial intelligence.
1-A Unique Career Path: You’ve held strategic positions across agencies, media owners, and clients—at Africa Creative, Eletromidia, and OOH Brasil. How does that integrated view of the communications chain shape how you approach media strategy at Streetwise?
The main lesson I’ve learned from working across different parts of the media and communications ecosystem is that we’re often looking at the same problem from completely different perspectives.
At an agency, you need to understand the client’s business challenges and turn them into strategy. On the media-owner side, you develop a deep understanding of the product, audience, technology, and the possibilities of the Media strategist. And when you’re on the client side, dealing directly with marketing and business, you see even more clearly that media only makes sense when it contributes to a larger business objective.
Moving across these different perspectives taught me to ask a question that I consider fundamental: “Why are we doing this?”
At Streetwise, I want to bring exactly that mindset. We shouldn’t start with the available inventory, the format, or the negotiation. We should start with the problem we need to solve. From there, we can leverage technical expertise, data, creativity, and technology to find the best answer.
Media shouldn’t start with the space we want to buy. It should start with the problem we want to solve for the client.
2-OOH’s Biggest Transformation: You said Out of Home is “living the biggest transformation in its history.” What specific changes—digitalization, programmatic, data intelligence—are most fundamentally reshaping OOH, and what’s the biggest opportunity for brands?
For a long time, OOH was perceived as an essentially physical media. Today, that definition is no longer enough.
Digitalization has transformed inventory. Programmatic is transforming the way media is bought. Data is reshaping planning and measurement. And technology is increasingly bringing OOH closer to the intelligence-driven approaches that, for a long time, we associated exclusively with digital media. All of this evolution has helped create a market that now accounts for 14.8% of total media investment in Brazil, with OOH ranking as the third-largest media channel by total ad spend in the country in the first quarter of this year.
Paradoxically, however, I believe OOH’s greatest value lies precisely in the fact that it still happens in the “real world”.
We live in an extremely fragmented attention economy. People are exposed to thousands of stimuli, often within closed environments that are personalized by algorithms. OOH occupies public space, moves with people throughout their journeys, and becomes part of everyday life.
The biggest opportunity for brands lies in the combination of these two forces: the scale and physical presence of OOH, together with the intelligence, flexibility, and measurement capabilities that technology is bringing to the media.
That intersection is completely redefining OOH’s potential.
3-From Media Buying to Strategic Intelligence: You said the future of media is “less about buying space and more about applied intelligence”. How do you translate that philosophy into daily practice at Streetwise?
It starts by changing the question we ask ourselves. Instead of first asking, “Where should we advertise?”, we need to ask, “Who do we want to impact, where are they, how do they move, what is the context, and what role do we want to play at that particular moment?”
It may sound like a semantic difference, but it completely changes the way we plan.
In practice, it means putting more intelligence into the process before the media buy: mobility data, behavioral insights, audience data, context, attention, performance history, and a deep understanding of the client’s business.
It also means redefining the role of media professionals. I don’t want people who are simply great at executing plans. I want people who challenge briefs, identify opportunities, build hypotheses, and can sit at the table with clients to discuss their business.
The media plan is deliverable. Intelligence is our product.
That’s an important cultural shift that I want to help build at Streetwise.
More than an operational function, I believe media should be one of the key strategic drivers of growth for both the agency and its clients, creating competitive advantage through strategy, intelligence, and creativity.
4-Integrating Media, Creativity, and Performance: Your mandate includes bringing planning, creativity, business intelligence, and performance closer together. Where is the friction greatest between these disciplines, and how do you resolve it?
I believe the biggest friction happens when these disciplines enter the process at different stages.
When strategy comes first, creative comes in later, and media is handed a finished idea simply to distribute, we inevitably miss opportunities.
This is particularly critical in OOH. A creative idea can be completely different depending on the environment, the format, the moment in the consumer journey, and even the distance from which it will be seen. Likewise, a great media opportunity can actually generate the creative idea itself.
That’s why I believe much less in integration at the end of the process and much more in collaborative thinking from the start.
Media needs to understand creativity. Creative needs to understand the possibilities of media. Data needs to inform both. And performance needs to feed learnings back into the entire system.
Integration isn’t about putting different disciplines in the same meeting. It’s about having them collaborate from the outset to build solutions to the same business problem.
5-Neuroscience Applied to Media: You study neuroscience applied to marketing. How do you apply insights about human perception and attention to OOH strategy, and what’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about how people process outdoor advertising?
There is a huge difference between being exposed to a message and actually paying attention to it. That has probably been one of the most important lessons for me.
Historically, media has focused heavily on concepts related to opportunities to see: audience, circulation, impressions, frequency. All of these remain fundamental. But neuroscience adds a layer that comes before all of them: Did the brain actually register the stimulus? Did it capture enough attention for the message to be processed?
This changes the way we think about OOH in many ways.
Size, contrast, the amount of information, position within the visual field, dwell time, context, and creative complexity are no longer simply aesthetic decisions. They are directly connected to how effectively a message can be processed.
Perhaps the insight that has most changed the way I think is understanding that visibility does not necessarily mean attention.
And in a world defined by fragmented attention, where attention has become a scarce resource, planning media without discussing attention means looking at only part of the problem.
6- AI as a Competitive Advantage: You’re an enthusiast of AI applied to communication and business. What’s the single most effective use of AI in OOH that you’ve seen or implemented, and what’s one thing AI still cannot do in media planning?
For me, the biggest value of AI today doesn’t come from one spectacular application. It comes from AI’s ability to amplify human intelligence and productivity.
In media planning, we can analyze volumes of information that would previously have taken hours or even days of work, cross-reference variables, identify patterns, build scenarios, organize knowledge, and accelerate analytical processes. This frees professionals to spend more time on what creates the most value: thinking.
In OOH, when we combine AI with mobility, audience, geolocation, context, and inventory data, the potential is enormous. We can move toward planning that is far more dynamic, contextual, and intelligent.
But there is one thing AI still can’t do on its own: exercise judgment.
It can identify correlations. It can organize information. It can suggest directions. But deeply understanding a brand, interpreting cultural nuances, challenging a brief, taking risks, and recognizing that a technically correct solution may not be a strategically brilliant one still requires human experience, sensitivity, and perspective.
That’s why I don’t see this as human intelligence versus artificial intelligence. I see it as human intelligence amplifyed by artificial intelligence.
And perhaps that is one of the most exciting transformations ahead of us: AI shouldn’t enable us to think less. It should give us the ability to think better.
My goal is to help position Streetwise among the agencies that make the smartest use of these technologies to create real value for clients.
