Igor Puga, Chief Marketing Officer of Santander and an unconditional devotee of basketball, told us at STREETOPIA how his special relationship with the sport began.
Born in Piracicaba, a city in the countryside of São Paulo, with a heavy tradition in basketball, Puga remembers the times of BCN UNIMEP, of Magic Paula, and also the rivalry with the neighboring city of Sorocaba, which was also very traditional in basketball because it involved everyone and it made him interested in participating in that atmosphere different from football: “It was the only sporting activity in the city that I could watch, that had an audience and that my family would let me go. Soccer game was complicated, there was a violent aspect to it, but getting in and out of the arena in a women's basketball game, that I was allowed to do ... ”
Unlike many guys who mostly look up to male role models, for Puga this was something far away since he breathed and lived the sport he liked mostly with female athletes, and so he came to respect them even more, especially for have been responsible for his own desire to play basketball. Until he was 9 years old, he decided to enroll in the basketball school of one of the three existing athletics clubs in the city, Clube Cristóvão Colombo from Piracicaba.
In addition to studying, sport was practically his only occupation and option to entertain himself, and this gave him, in addition to group engagement, the development of his skills with the fundamentals of the game and a lot of discipline: “I am the son of a teacher, so my mother said, since you started doing this shit, you will do it anyway and well, if you have to train, you have to train ... I thank my mother! If I did manage to get somewhere, it was thanks to her. I was accepted at the confederation of basketball thanks to her, there was that discipline of respecting and keeping up good attendance, that is, you can do what you want, son, as long as you do it right. My mother paved my way for me to play basketball. However, I found and identified myself with basketball thanks to the city I was born”
As a teenager, Puga began to connect with other aspects of basketball that went beyond physical activities. Culturally speaking, for example, how does this sport have the ability to mix and involve different universes so that they share the same passion? How can you influence people so much to the point where they act in the way that people dress, what they hear and how they walk? The truth is that basketball often promotes social positive miscegenation, being in fact one of the most democratic sports that we know and Puga recognizes that aspect:
It is very interesting how so many people seen as different in a context that is not very receptive to the 'new' or outside of any standard, are able to see themselves as equals through a common taste and thus, Puga adds: “A world has opened up to me through basketball. The childhood friends I have, the houses I used to go to, the kind of parties I went to at night, my world changed. It was more like a door to a new universe that always existed but that was not visible to me, I was just a boy who had to fit into a certain fiefdom, but I didn't like it. With basketball, I understood it as a place where people were freer, they had more right to be what they wanted ... ”Puga's perception became more refined and with more in-depth, mainly because he was immersed in an experience where differences meant strengthened bonds.
Still on the aspect of being different, Puga has always had a “thing” for the B side of things, the unusually different, and how it can awaken the most authentic and truth of each individual and how it can contribute so people don’t feel repressed, don't feel obliged to be who you don't want to be. Patrick Ewing, for example, is one of those cases, which for Puga was never unanimous, but he is a figure who managed to represent exactly what he would like to be. Another great and important example is Manu Ginobili, who is a source of inspiration through all his struggle to become one of the greatest players in the NBA.
Igor Puga, as soon as he was consolidated in his profession, it became very clear to himself that he would not work with basketball, but he realized that the more successful he was in the sport, the more easily he would be able to fulfill his dreams with the things that make him minimally happy: “I thought it was very distant to work with anything in marketing, communication or advertising related to basketball and I don't need to either work with basketball or forget about it, it doesn’t have to be a choice. I mean if I manage to have my profession, I will have money and use my free time to do what gives me great pleasure ... ”
One of his greatest achievements was when he decided to watch an NBA final fearing that the Raptors would not win, moreover he was surprised by the commotion of everyone when Barack Obama made an appearance: “I come from a country where we are neither proud nor respected by politicians, unfortunately. I was in a country whose people's reverence for the president of another country, made everyone stand and clap for almost 3 minutes. I was thrilled!”
As a marketing professional and through this type of experience, it is humanly you can’t avoid comparing and deeply analyzing all the communication and creative possibilities and aspects found in an NBA game and not use them as a reference to be applied in some type of project or activation. Puga, highlights the relationship that the league has with the consumer and the actions focused on social responsibility: “The NBA specifically is a class of relationship with the consumer, if we evaluate the disciplines from a technical point of view, they are simply at the top of their games, and nothing comes close to a regular season game. Not to mention the social commitment initiatives with the surrounding communities and every relationship that people have with the professionalism of the sport itself ... ”
The change in the dress code at the NBA was remembered by Puga as one of the greatest marketing, conduct and influence phenomena that ever existed, for being beyond a cultural cry for liberation, players did not think twice about being who they really were on the streets or on the courts. The larger uniforms and swag of Fab 5, a University of Michigan team formed by Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson in the 90s, set the tone for the decade, influencing players and fans of generations to come.
It is awesome to see how the sport genuinely becomes the extension of those who somehow dedicate themselves to it, and nothing is closer to the truth than being able to acknowledge that basketball continues to make a difference in Puga's life with the same intensity as back when their paths crossed when he was a child. And make no mistake about it, to kids, basketball is the purest translation of joy.
