Why did you start a this PhD program at Nova SBE?

I always wanted to be a scientist; my doubt was the specific research area. After finishing my master's degree in neuroscience, I opted to do research on a more macro level. I wanted to know why human beings behave the way they do and how their behaviour impacts society. In the end, I decided to do my studies in Consumer Behaviourat Nova SBE. I chose this university because it is a prestigious university with a close relationship with very different stakeholders, from companies to hospitals.

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What was the most valuable experience during your PhD?

It was to go abroad for my Exchange Term at Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) - Erasmus University. I did my visiting for six months, and it was amazing. At a personal level, it was an enriching experience because I started to live in a new country with different habits and ways of living. For instance, I loved the fact that we could use our bike to go everywhere.  

It was also extraordinary at a professional level; I met top scholars in my field and started new projects. I completely recommend RSM; it is a very dynamic school with great professors and facilities.

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What would you say to students starting their PhD?

I would give four advances to prospective Ph.D. students. Here they are:

Find a good supervisor. A good relationship with the supervisor is essential. Choose someone that has availability and resources (networking, grants). And, more important, someone you admire.

Be resilient. High resilience is a must for any scientist. Doing research work requires a lot of thought and deliberation; it is a slow and self-learning process.

Be creative. I would say this is one of the most important ingredients to success. Being creative allow your papers to stand out and get visibility. People love surprising and counterintuitive findings.

Read a lot. Reading is crucial for different reasons: getting an original contribution, writing well, planning studies, among others. Good quality papers can be your best professor.

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What come next in your PhD?

I am in the final stage of my phD; the next step is to go to the academic Job Market. Currently, I am working on three papers, and I intend to submit one of them to Journal of Marketing Research in the following months.

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What is your research about? (please use non-technical language)

My research work is focused on several topics: consumer psychology, emotions and creativity.

In one of my papers, I am trying to understand how the brand preferences of advertising creatives change their work. I found that those who have a negative attitude toward the brand, when compared to those who have a positive one, are more likely to produce functional advertisements (i.e., advertisements that appeal to rationality by emphasizing product benefits/advantages). They are also less likely to produce emotional advertisements (i.e., advertisements that contain emotional references or warmth appeals).

Interestingly, I observed these results with non-professional and professionals creatives (8 years of experience, on average). I propose that this happens due to a process of emotional suppression. Individuals who dislike a brand believe more strongly that they should suppress their emotions and stay rational as a way to overcome their perceived bias.

In this work, I challenge the idea that creatives who dislike a brand produce bad outcomes. Indeed, there are situations in which functional ads outperform emotional ads, such as when advertising products in new markets.

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How can the results of your research be applied to everyday life/business?

My research is particularly useful to media agencies and advertising companies. In my first paper, I found that creatives' work outcomes depend on their relationship with the brand (i.e., their client). Thus, I suggesta personalized way to allocate brands/projects to creatives. Managers should find the most suitable creative according to the objectives of the brand/client.

My work also informs media agencies on how to optimize advertising performance. I study which emotional contexts (for example, a disgusting Youtube video or a sad movie) improve advertising recall.

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How did you come up with your research idea?

This is a tricky question because it might be difficult to disentangle the process behind it. I tend to read literature on very different topics (for example, a political science paper and biomedical discoveries). This approach provides me with a broad range of concepts that help me triggering new connections and be more creative. Apart from this, I also try to find incoherences or constraints that practitioners encounter. For instance, after several interviews with creative managers, I found that they do not have clear and consistent criteria to allocate creatives to brands/clients. And, this topic became one of my papers.

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Are you working on any project now?

I have other papers besides my job market paper. In one of them, I am studying how emotional contexts influence advertising recall. For example, would commercials' recall increase if you see them after a sad movie or after a horror movie? To do this, I am studying 4 different emotions: happy, sad, fear, and disgust. And, I propose that disgusting contexts are particularly harmful to advertising recall due to functional and evolutionary reasons. So far, my studies confirm my predictions.

In another paper, I am investigating how the attitude toward the brand of advertising creatives change their ability to predict consumers' ad liking. I found that people who dislike the brand are better at predicting consumers' evaluations; creatives who like the brand tend to overestimate that these evaluations will be positive.

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