You can read the interview in Portuguese or read below in English.

CHMKT: Tell me a little about your career?
IR: I've worked for GE and Coca-Cola in the beginning of my career as internal creative in Hungary. Later I worked for McCann, JWT and had the chance to set-up a creative dept in Bahrain for a new agency. Later I opened my own agency 7Field in Budapest. After selling it I started traveling with my family and after Singapore and Indonesia, I currently live in Australia. Currently I work on Ads of the World and a couple of other sites as a consultant.

CHMKT: How did you come up with the ideia of Ads Of The World? How did it all begin?
IR: It was all born of my own need. When I worked as a creative and got a brief for a new brand I wanted to learn about the advertising within the category. There were some sites out there, like Lurzers and many blogs, but they were either pay sites or required too much time to actually find stuff I was interested in. I wanted a simpler site that helps me in my research. Thus, I created an ad collection just for my own needs. Later, I shared it with my colleagues by uploading them to a website. We realized AotW became like a virtual ad club where we could discuss and get inspired by new ads, learn from each other and be part of an international professional network. The function of the archive soon changed and it became a community.

CHMKT: Well, I could see that AOTW is a real company now? How’s it structured (number of employees, partners, business model, sources of revenue)? What other services do you offer?
IR: Yes WebMediaBrands bought AotW from me. I'm the editor and admin as before. We have one person helping part time with technology and another person working on satisfying our advertisers. But the largest help is all the people in agencies sending work for publishing and all the creatives who comment and send me suggestions on how to further develop the site. It's all a community feat really, I'm just organizing everyone's efforts.

CHMKT: How many visitors do you have, in average, a day?
IR: AotW gets 60-70 thousand unique visitors a day. To put it in perspective that's like 50% more than what the leading advertising publication AdAge.com gets. I think AotW is the most visited advertising site in the world now.

CHMKT: What are the reasons of all this success, in your view?
IR: I won't tell you all my secrets, unless of course you pay me a great deal of money. Jokes aside, I think it's about hard work and determination. Once you have an idea you have to keep working on it until you just can't do it anymore physically or mentally. When I started AotW, I worked 12 hours a day at the agency. If you work in advertising you know hard it is. Then went home and worked another 4 hours on AotW. I also spent my weekends on AotW. I did this for 2 years before it became well known to advertising professionals. If you're willing to put such effort into anything something surely will result from it. There are many other things besides this, but this is the most important.

CHMKT: Well, I guess many people stopped subscribing to ARCHIVE MAGAZINE after you started AOTW. Do they hate you?
IR: It's true. At least 50 people emailed me saying AotW saved them the Lurzers yearly fee.

At one point Archive wanted to buy AotW, but, as I was told Mr. Lurzers, the owner declined the deal for some reason.

It's very hard for traditional publications keep up with the times. They are closing down by the dozens. I worked for a daily newspaper for a while and I was unsuccessful convincing the management that they need to change their whole business model to stay alive. I think there is a place for printed publications, but news works better online, because things happen fast and people can't wait for a day till they read the news, let alone for weeks like with the Archive magazine. You also miss out on all the community aspect. I admit magazines look good on the shelf. Publications should evolve with technology, most of them have strong brands and great editorial staffs.
I hope they don't hate me, we have a good relationship. We email each other from time to time.

CHMKT: From what you see on AOTW, what country has produced the best advertising? Still on that, what’s the most creative agency in the world, in your opinion? And Why?
IR: There is no simple answer to that, because there are great creatives and agencies in every country. If I have to make a generalization here is my opinion:

Brazil is the best in art direction and design. The visuals are fresh and rich. Concepts are novel and entertaining. Brazil is in an upward trend, so it is getting even better with every month.
Reference: http://creativebits.org/inspiration/amazing_brazilian_art_direction

USA is great in copy based advertising. They have excellent writers and their campaigns touch your soul with words.
Western Europe, especially the UK, France and Scandinavia is very strong conceptually. The ideas are insightful and sharp.

I can't name one network that stands out above the rest. Ogilvy, BBDO, JWT and Saatchi all do great work in some countries are underperform in others. W+K, CP+B and BBH are doing great worldwide. These companies exchange talent frequently and cross pollinate both creativity and agency culture. Each one of them is strong in certain areas.

There is no best overall, but there is always a best for a certain communication problem. My subjective personal favorites are CP+B and Rethink. I always enjoy their work.

CHMKT: What is the latest piece of Communications that you consider pure genius and why?
IR: There are dozens of course, but I want to answer your question. I think the Snickers campaign with the made up words is fantastic. I always tried to sell such a campaign to my clients and they never bought it. When I was in Manhattan I was so glad to see it running everywhere. It's simple, smart and memorable. It is extremely strong branding too. I admit the campaign changed my perception about the brand. Snickers became my choice of chocolate. And, that's the ultimate achievement for a campaign, isn't it?

Reference: http://adsoftheworld.com/taxonomy/brand/snickers

CHMKT: Can you spot any trend coming up from what you’ve seen there lately?
IR: Yes, there are several trends.

On short term we will see more shocking ads. Sex doesn't cut it anymore. Creatives go for politics and religion. The last 2 taboos. These are dangerous, but effective because they go viral. DDB Brazil's WWF campaign was published by hundreds of sites within hours of releasing it. Even though WWF got cold feet, the campaign achieved more for WWF than they could ask for. It raised awareness about an important issue and surely on long term will help WWF tremendously. We all know there is no such thing as bad publicity.

A mid-term trend is simplification. People don't have to time to read and get immersed in understanding a piece of communication. Ads try to match the shorter attention span by becoming ever simpler. Visual ideas and short lines are going to be popular in the next years.

Finally, a long term trend. Product placing and more subtle advertising together with content based advertising will completely take over the current scene. Entertainment and advertising will completely merge.

CHMKT: Has our definition of interestingness changed in the past couple of years (what with internet, and technology and all that)?
IR: The information age changed only the fact that we have a larger selection of content and a better way to filter out what we like from what is pushed on us.

CHMKT: What should brands be doing to stand out in this context?
IR: Brands should respect and match the consumer's taste for entertainment and information as much as they can.

CHMKT: Which is your favorite case study that proves the excellence in strategic thinking (as it’s a planning blog)?
IR: The running Apple campaign demonstrates excellent strategic thinking.

We live in an increasingly complicated world. Most people don't want more complexity and geeky stuff when buying a gadget. Yet, every tech company is pushing on us a plethora of features that we don't even understand.

Apple realized this and positioned Apple products as simple and humane. The products demos on white background, the colorful iPod spots and the iconic I'm a PC and I'm a Mac spots communicate simplicity and humanity. The style went viral. There are dozens of remakes and the sales went through the roof. This is not just planning, advertising and design at work, but they play a huge role.

CHMKT: What do you think of Brazilian Advertising? What can the rest of the world learn from us, and what must we learn from the others?
IR: Brazilian advertising is really great. As I already mentioned art direction is the best in the world. There are lot of good examples of good strategic thinking as well.

Brazil needs to learn from Europe and the north America about how they come up with ideas that translate into integrated campaigns that work across media and can work for several years.

CHMKT: What advice would you give to Brazilian agencies that want to improve their work quality?
IR: Focus on long term strategy and maybe copy. Hopefully clients will appreciate such an improvement too.

CHMKT: Last but not least, what are your plans for the future?
IR: I'd like to continue working as social media consultant.

One day I want to work as a consultant to help companies find the perfect match for their advertising needs. I don't know if there is a name for this profession already.