Marilyn Fonseca, IM student and Communications Director of the INCAE Entrepreneurship Center, Costa Rica

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Marilyn Fonseca has dedicated her career to communications and advertising. She has worked for numerous companies in Costa Rica, including brands such as Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz. She currently puts all of this knowledge to use in her role as Communications Director for the Latin American Center for Entrepreneurs, in addition to advising small and medium-sized businesses as a freelance marketing and advertising consultant. She shares her story in the following interview.

When you decided to study advertising, what attracted you most about this sector?
I was originally super attracted to the idea of ​​creativity, that possibility of creating a universe in which the brand could live . Unlike most usa mobile database people, I didn't change the channel when commercials were on ; I would sit and watch them and try to think about what I could have done better, or simply try to break down the idea.
So I enrolled in advertising to create those ads and to build that universe in which brands live .

The beginning of your career was closely linked to audiovisual production. How do you remember that time? What lessons did you learn?
Well, it was a dose of reality . All those wonderful ideas have to be executed and end up in the hands of a production company. Here I learned about the limited budgets and that the best idea is the one that's told with the fewest resources .

When you started working for Darwin Zone, your work shifted to a more digital focus. How did you experience this change, and which of your tasks did you find most rewarding?
Well, I'd always been interested in digital marketing since college. One of my professors at the University of Cordoba had earned a master's degree in England on the subject back in 2007-2008, so it really caught my attention.
Later in my career, I had learned to understand the importance of a proper strategy , so I loved the challenge of putting this knowledge into practice. So, this was what I loved: creating digital marketing strategies that were anchored not only in social media but also in the client's other digital channels , and even in BTL activations.