Klick Health brings on creative veteran Romero, formerly of The Bloc, for unique 'Maker' role

Independent agency Klick Health has tapped creative industry heavy hitter Bernardo Romero to mentor a team experimenting with new and innovative ways to market and advertise health care.

Romero, who joins Klick today in the newly created role of “Maker,” will work alongside a new internal team called “The Workshop'' that aims to “elevate our craft and develop breakthrough work” in the healthcare creative space, Klick Health Chief Creative Officer Rich Levy said.  Romero will also run master classes on subjects like art direction and typography.

Romero, who stepped down in February from a two-year stint as chief creative officer for independent healthcare agency The Bloc, said he is excited about the opportunity to “prototype the next phase of advertising” in a role that will bring him back to his roots as a storyteller and craftsman.

The hire marks a reunion for Romero and Levy, who worked together when Levy helmed creative efforts at FCB Health. Levy said the pair brainstormed about the new position over coffee last fall, after Romero turned to his old colleague for career advice.
 
“He was having amazing success at his prior agency and was getting a lot of phone calls about what other people thought was his next career,” Levy said. They were incredible offers, Levy said, but he could tell from the conversation that Romero “really wasn’t that excited” by any of them.

“What he came to realize was that these jobs were so big and so lofty that they would take him really far away from the craft of the work,” Levy recalled. “As the conversation was going, at some point a light went off over my head and I said, ‘Why don’t we do this again together? Why don’t we create something that is perfectly tailored to your passion?’ I think at that point we both got excited.”

Over the next few months, the former colleagues hatched a plan for a workshop of “makers, conceptors, noodlers and doodlers” whose job will be to experiment with new and unique ways to elevate healthcare marketing. 

“When you’re talking about bringing people into an agency that have such diverse backgrounds, the typical [job] titling structure just doesn’t make sense any more,” Levy said of the unconventional job titles. “At the heart of it, we are all craftspeople, and that’s what you do in a workshop, you make things, you craft things.”

Romero will have no book of business or direct reports but plans to pull together a multidisciplinary team. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll hire a screenwriter from Hollywood, we’ll hire somebody from Netflix, a musician from Broadway, or an engineer,” Romero said. He and Levy already shared a similar mindset, he said, so “it was not that hard to sell this crazy new model to everyone else.”

Romero has worked with iconic consumer brands like Adidas, Gatorade, ESPN, Heinz and Nissan, and his resume includes a long list of accolades including 37 Cannes Lions awards and 80 Clio awards.  Under Romero’s creative direction, The Bloc ranked on Cannes Lions’ “Of the Year '' lists alongside top consumer agencies for the last two years.

He also worked on the award-winning 2020 horror/sci fi short film "Instant Doctor," which imagines a world where the human side of healthcare is eliminated. 

When Levy first recruited Romero to FCB back in 2016, he was working as an art director in his native Brazil. Unbeknownst to Levy, Romero had recently been diagnosed with diabetes and was looking to make the jump from consumer to healthcare advertising as a result of his experience. 

“The thing that stuck with me the most on that call was the fact that Rich did not talk about his agency or his network. He told me ‘Bernardo, I need you to help me change the industry so we can make a bigger impact. And I was like, either this guy is nuts, or he’s onto something,” said Romero, who moved to the U.S. for the FCB job. “And in fact, he was onto something because two years later we won [Health Care] Network of the Year [at Cannes] and we’ve been on that stage together a lot of times.” 

Now they’re looking to reprise that creative partnership at Klick. 

“We were founded by a couple of computer hackers 25 years ago or so and I think creating this [workshop] and having Bernardo join us is a continuation of those hacker roots,” Levy added. “It will allow us to sort of ‘hack’ the boundaries of healthcare and find new ways, innovative ways to help people.”