April, 2026.- In an advertising ecosystem saturated with short-term metrics, Juliana Pileggi Suplicy, CEO of AKM, has established herself as one of the most influential voices advocating for brand experience as a strategic pillar for long-term brand building. With nearly three decades of experience, Juliana has led AKM’s evolution from creating pioneering internet challenges to executing monumental experiences at events like the World Cup and the Olympic Games. Her philosophy is clear: experience does not compete with performance; it enhances it. For Juliana, a successful activation doesn’t end when the lights go out; it becomes a platform that generates data, shareable content, and, above all, an emotional connection that lowers customer acquisition costs over time.
In this exclusive interview with Roastbrief, the AKM leader explains why Brazil serves as a unique laboratory for experiential marketing, driven by a collective culture and an innate capacity for digital amplification. From executing strategic promotions that have won Lions at Cannes—such as the innovative Hershey’s campaign—to implementing ESG criteria with real social impact through projects like Gerando Falcões, Juliana reveals the secret to elevating a sales tactic into a coherent brand narrative. Discover how the intersection of creativity, strategy, and business results is setting the standard for modern agencies that seek not just to entertain, but to transform consumer perception into tangible value.
1. Brand Experience as a Long-Term Builder: You’ve focused on the role of brand experience in long-term brand building. In a world where many marketers are chasing short-term performance metrics, how do you make the case to clients that investment in brand experience delivers sustainable value over time? What metrics do you use to prove it?
A: The main point is to show that performance and brand experience do not compete with each other; they complement each other. Experience strengthens the brand and creates consistency, which improves the efficiency of performance actions over time. When the consumer has a relevant experience with the brand, it increases the chance of recall, consideration, and recommendation, and this directly impacts conversion and acquisition cost in the medium and long term.
To prove this value, we use metrics that connect the experience to brand and business KPIs, such as: brand lift (awareness, consideration, and purchase intent), time spent and engagement level, volume and quality of interactions and social media mentions, audience growth (leads, CRM, opt-ins), post-campaign sales impact, as well as comparisons with previous initiatives and industry benchmarks.
Experience creates a brand asset that continues to generate returns even after the event, campaign, or activation ends.
2. Turning Experiences into Real Brand Value: Experiences can be memorable, but they don’t always translate into measurable brand value. How do you, at AKM, ensure that the experiences you create move beyond “that was fun” to actually building equity, loyalty, and business results?
A: Brand experience cannot always be measured, but it plays a direct role in building connection and perception. That’s why everything starts with the briefing and planning: before execution, it is essential to define the strategy and ensure the experience is aligned with the business objective, the brand purpose, and its positioning. Only then can the initiative create value and deliver consistent results.
At AKM, we create strong and creative activations and experiences that are always connected to the brand’s values and long-term brand building.
When an experience generates shareable content, data, and relationships, it stops being just an event and becomes a platform for brand building.
3. Creativity, Strategy, and Business Results: You sit at the intersection of creativity, strategy, and business results. How do you balance these three forces when leading an agency? Can you share an example where a creatively bold idea also delivered clear, measurable business outcomes?
A: The agency’s role is to develop strategy and creative ideas that solve real business challenges. To achieve this, we rely on multidisciplinary teams working on each project, ensuring consistency in execution and maximizing results.
When strategy and creativity work together, the outcome goes beyond communication and translates into tangible impact, such as increased sales, higher engagement, market share growth, and stronger brand equity.
4. The Growth of Brand Experience in Brazil: You’ve witnessed and contributed to the growth of brand experience in Brazil. What makes the Brazilian market unique in its appetite for experiential marketing, and what can global brands learn from how Brazilian consumers engage with experiences?
A: Over these nearly 30 years at AKM, we have developed thousands of brand experiences connecting people and brands in different contexts, such as the World Cup, the Olympic Games, Christmas activations, festivals, major fairs like CCXP and BGS, as well as corporate and entertainment projects. Throughout this journey, we have also helped drive innovation in the brand experience and live marketing market, including:
- the first promotion with prizes delivered through a digital wallet, transforming the way consumers are rewarded;
- the creation of the first internet endurance challenge;
- a website for Hershey’s featuring news made from real chocolate;
- seven editions of one of the biggest Christmas events in Curitiba;
- the largest Christmas tree in São Paulo, renewed year after year with new concepts and activations;
- bringing Broadway to corporate events.
The trend is for brand experience to continue growing, and in Brazil this movement is even stronger for three main reasons:
- Social and collective culture: Brazilians value gatherings, festivals, and celebrations as a form of connection.
- Strong emotional and creative response: experiences that generate surprise, participation, and emotion have a major impact.
- Natural digital amplification: Brazilian consumers are highly active on social media, turning in-person experiences into content and cultural conversation.
In Brazil, great experiences quickly become stories, content, and cultural conversation — often even memes. We saw at this year’s SXSW that Brazil is a relevant example of a culture that values human connection and physical presence, with events such as Carnival, Festa Junina celebrations, and large popular festivities. This reinforces a global trend: brands will increasingly need to invest in initiatives that create real connection.
5. ESG in Practice (with Real Cases): ESG is often discussed in theory, but you emphasize “ESG in practice” with real case studies. Can you share an example of how AKM has embedded genuine ESG thinking into a client’s brand experience or promotional strategy, beyond just a sustainability-themed campaign?
A: AKM’s DNA is to create experiences, strategies, and results focused on building real connections between brands, people, and causes. More than communicating purpose, we aim to turn causes into concrete initiatives with relevance and impact. For us, ESG has always been about practice, not rhetoric. Some examples of this can be seen in projects we have developed over the years:
- SPIC – Ilha da Imaginação Case: an annual cultural project, now in its seventh year, focused on social transformation and access to culture.
- Gerando Falcões: a client for over 8 years, with whom we have developed structural projects, including, every year, one of the largest social fundraising events in the country. We have been working consistently with the third sector for more than 9 years.
6. Promotions into Brand Strategy: You’ve talked about turning promotions into brand strategy by combining data, creativity, and consumer connection. How do you elevate what is often a short-term sales tactic into something that builds the brand over time? What’s the secret to making promotions strategic?
A: The key is to stop seeing promotions as just one-off discount actions or immediate incentives. Relevant promotions need to be strategic — driving sales while also strengthening brand and positioning.
At AKM, promotions are built around a core idea connected to the brand’s positioning, supported by consistent storytelling that sustains the entire campaign. It is also an opportunity for the brand to use personalities and cultural elements in an intelligent way, with humor, timing, and language aligned with its territory.
Strategic promotions are based on three pillars:
- Consumer insight
The mechanics must be rooted in real consumer behavior. - A strong creative idea
The promotion needs to be memorable, shareable, and consistent with the brand’s positioning. - Smart use of data
Promotions are a great opportunity to capture data, build relationships, and personalize future interactions.
Over the past five years, we have developed and executed more than 100 promotions for our clients, always committed to combining creativity, results, and experience. During this period, campaigns totaled more than 98 million registered products and R$ 94.7 million in prizes distributed. To this day, we are the only Brazilian live marketing agency to win a Silver Lion at Cannes with the promotional campaign “Open Your Mouth and Eat the Website,” created for Hershey’s in the “Use of Digital Platforms” category.
