For Bob Cuneo, creativity is a whole lot more than a skill.
It’s been a way of navigating life. From his early days sketching as an aspiring caricature artist to co-founding Brado, Bob’s story is about harnessing imagination, empathy, and passion. To hear Bob tell it, “I get to apply my art to business. How lucky is that?”
Bob’s career began while in high school. Not in a fancy boardroom, but at a dry cleaner that he swears was a front for something else. He laughs as he recounts the cash-only operation and his suspiciously wealthy Greek boss. But it was at the age of 20, after two years of art school, that he landed his first real job in advertising, joining the fourth-largest ad agency in the world, and changing his life forever.
“It was like a real-life Mad Men. The bars in offices, the late nights, the martinis at lunch.” Now, looking back, Bob sums it up simply. “I wouldn’t trade that time for anything, and I wouldn’t relive it for anything.”
Despite the chaos, Bob was hooked. He fell in love with the business of ideas, especially when those ideas were able to solve real human problems. And that, along with a whole lot of listening, is at the very core of Brado. “What I do is listen to people to solve other people’s problems,” he laughs.
“What I do is listen to people
to solve other people’s problems”
When Brado launched, consulting firms were everywhere, and the last thing the world needed was another. So, Bob and his team took a different approach. “We weren’t consultants. We were researchers. But we used research as a tool to be consultants—and we grounded everything in our clients’ customers’ beliefs.”
The strategy worked. And under his leadership, Brado grew to become one of the most respected strategy and insights firms in the country. Brado didn’t just interpret data, they interpreted people.
“There’s an art to conversation,” he says. “There’s an art to how you organize it, and an art to how you deliver it.” And boy can Bob deliver. Over the years, Bob, and his long-time partner, Steve Nollau, cris-crossed the continents to chase down insight, bringing home some legendary stories in the process.
“I once took a cab from Madrid to London. I got locked in a holding cell in South Africa. And I rode on a railroad track in Istanbul with a train coming straight at me. I screamed. The driver didn’t even flinch.”
But it’s not all wild rides and near-death focus groups for Bob. He has a refined kind of clarity that comes from decades in the creative trenches, learning a lifetime of lessons along the way. The most important one? “I’d rather be happy than right,” he says. “When your life is over, were you happy or not? That’s really it.”
Bob’s the kind of leader who reminds you that you can be kind, treat others the way you want to be treated, and still be the most interesting person in the room.
After all, as Bob says himself, “When I get bored, I take over the conversation. That way, I know it’ll be interesting.”
And with Bob Cuneo, it always is.
