Ratto won Volkswagen's pitch — then conceded the fees that sank the agency

David Ratto founded his Argentine agency in 1974 and turned it into one of the country's most famous, serving Volkswagen for much of the 1990s and carrying the BBDO network name for fourteen years as Ratto/BBDO. Then the founder unwound it himself.

Ratto dates the beginning of the end to 1994, when he removed the word David from the company name — the personal equity, in his own telling, that the relationships ran on. In January 2001, after a year of negative balance, BBDO's Latin America chairman offered to buy a majority of the shares. The condition was that Ratto return to the presidency and that his son Carlos and his partner Roberto leave. Ratto refused without hesitating: he always believed the agency's continuity was given by the presence of his son.

The same year Volkswagen pitted Ratto against DDB in a pitch. Ratto's presentation won — but DDB countered by cutting its fee ask from 7.5 to 6 percent of investment, and Ratto conceded. He negotiated to attend only 50 percent of the account, by contract, until April. He calls accepting those conditions "another big mistake of ours."

Debt reached around five million Argentine pesos. A rescue with Eduardo Fischer stalled when Argentina's December 2001 crisis changed the rules of the game. In 2002 the agency entered convocatoria de acreedores, and by Easter the Quintana Street office stood empty with a "for rent" sign — the account that walked, told by the man who lost it.