BIOGRAPHY

Starting out as a junior art director at del Rivero, Messianu (now dRM DDB), Luis Lozada worked on accounts such as Volkswagen, Continental Airlines and McDonald’s, eventually taking stewardship of the Continental Airlines account with his copywriting partner.

After five years of working on everything from ads to photo and television-commercial shoots and winning his first CLIO award (among many other national and international awards), he left to start a dotcom with a group of entrepreneurs. The website concept - Gotagorda.com - would focus on the hispanic and latin-american youth market, with an emphasis on extreme sports and youth lifestyle. Gotagorda was notable for being one of the earliest adopters of on-site video games to gather database info, music, and for adopting an early model of user-provided content in the online world - what is now known as Web 2.0. Users uploaded and rated photos of themselves participating in extreme sports.

After the dotcom bubble burst and funding dried up, Lozada returned to advertising, freelancing as an art director and copywriter at several small and large Miami agencies. While working as a senior art director at Contacto Leo Burnett, he was one half of what became only the second hispanic ad agency team to ever win the most coveted award for advertising creative - the Cannes Lion.

A master of the guerrilla stunt, Lozada soon found himself featured in the pages of Advertising Age, AD WEEK and other ad-industry publications for a self-promotion/auction he posted on eBay - a stunt which would take him to work as the creative director of a small agency in Dayton, Ohio - The Next Wave.

In 2003, Lozada was one of three founding partners of Matador Miami - a local award-winning agency that was noted for producing outstanding and award-winning work even while working for clients with small budgets.

Luis Lozada is a multiple winner of the CLIO, Se Habla Español, FIAP, CRESTA, New York Festivals and ADDY Awards - winning Best of Show one year. He has also received a One Show pencil, an ANDY award and the aforementioned Cannes Lion. Additionally, his work has been featured in PRINT magazine, awards annuals and even a college-level advertising textbook.

Aside from his exceptional career in advertising, he is a published writer of creative and editorial material and also freelances as an award-winning advertising copywriter and speechwriter. A long-time musician, he was a founder of the Spanish-rock band, Tango36 (SONY records) and is also a published songwriter.

Most recently, he has taken up photography, handling advertising shoots and even photographing an award-winning print ad campaign. He has become increasingly involved in surf and water photography and has appeared in several surf publications, both online and in print.

During his spare time, Luis Lozada enjoys reading, traveling, writing, surfing, movies, good conversation with friends, spending time with his two children, photography, playing guitar, working on pro-bono projects, serving on the executive committee for the local chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, Miami Dolphins football and Pittsburgh Penguins hockey.

Lozada is a graduate of the Miami Ad School portfolio program and also holds a bachelor of arts degree in Communication (Journalism) from the University of Central Florida.