Chief Change Officer - #210 César Couto Ferreira’s Next Act: From Madonna to Meaning

Episode Date: March 2, 2025

What happens when a media executive walks away from the world of celebrity and spotlights? César Couto Ferreira, the former MTV and Vice Media powerhouse, traded backstage passes with global icons like Madonna and Coldplay for a mission with more depth. After launching media empires across Europe and Brazil, he realized that glitz alone wasn’t enough—he wanted impact. Now, he’s bringing his creative and business savvy to olio.is and Streamhub, shaping the future of media with a blend of vision, strategy, and just the right amount of rockstar energy.Key Highlights of Our Interview:MTV: From a Dream to Daily Life“Watching MTV as a kid, I thought, ‘That’s the dream.’ By 2003, I was living it. From Portugal to London, I went from fan to colleague—working with my idols and hanging out with heroes.”A Front-Row Seat to Media Transformation“From analog to digital, concerts to streaming, I’ve been at the frontline of media’s biggest shift. And yes, I saw REM’s last concert—jealous yet? Launching MTV Portugal, mentoring MTV Base Africa, bringing MTV Italy and Greece to life—it was a whirlwind of concerts, launches, and 1 billion viewers streaming the EMAs from Lisbon.”The Dark Side of the Spotlight“Being immersed in the industry, I witnessed its pitfalls. Amy Winehouse, a radiant talent, was in the wrong hands. Seeing how brilliance was overshadowed by exploitation made me question the industry’s priorities. When Amy died, it wasn’t just a loss; it was a wake-up call. I couldn’t be part of a system that profits from pain. That day, I knew—I needed to change the game.”A Quest for a Better Industry“Creativity deserves care, not exploitation. That realization sparked a mission to create spaces where artistry thrives without the shadows of industry’s darker sides.”Designing Society, One Summit at a Time“As a self-proclaimed ‘designer for society,’ I worked with governments and innovators to connect tourism and tech. The Web Summit is proof that big ideas and small countries can make magic.”_________________________Connect with Us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Cesar Couto Ferreira______________________--**Chief Change Officer**--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Deep Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives, Visionary Underdogs,Transformation Gurus & Bold Hearts.6 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>100,000+ subscribers are outgrowing. Act Today.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Oshul is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today's guest is Cecil Coutu-Fahada from Portugal, a beautiful, beautiful country I visited a few years ago to join the web summit in Lisbon as a guest and a speaker. The people are warm, the food is great, the sea and the sky are so blue, I surely want to go back.

This episode is like a real-life version of the popular HBO TV series Secession. I'm sure many of you watched the show. It's not just about a secession war for the top job of CEO who was in a super wealthy and powerful family, but also about the war in old media versus new media and tech, a succession from old money to new money. Since the beginning of the century, Cecil has been involved in this transformation from analog to digital media, from a DJ and TV presenter to an MTV Networks executive, working with Madonna and all the music stars, he's seen the bright and the dark sides of 21st century media and entertainment. Without further ado, let's get into the womb. When I was a kid, I was always keen for biology, for science.

And I went to the biotech. And I had the opportunity to do this scholarship, and I went to France. I was an eye performance athlete, and I was 19. And this is obviously the passion of my life, but I had a family that was in media. All my family from my mom's side, basically they were working in media, radio philosophers they were thinkers basically very creative people and my brain in a way was divided I always wanted for the logical side of things but my DNA let's put it like this my genetics and my environment was pushing me to arts and to be creative there was a time that I finished my graduation and I thought, okay,

I'm going to do biotech and I'm going to work with wine. I'm going to do everything I dream of. But my passion was radio. And this is really good because we do the podcasts of this one is really nice. So radio just was craving for me, it was calling me and my dreams obviously was resonating and I had this amazing opportunity to become a radio DJ. Wow. What? Quite early in my life. And I was studying at the same time and doing radio at the same time.

And I finished my grad and suddenly someone asked me, and this is really funny because it was, I was having this coffee conversation and someone was listening to me and saying, are you that guy? And I said, yeah. And he said, do you want to work for my radio? Can be the radio manager. I was 23 years old and I became a radio manager. Then I accepted and I was quite successful. And then television came. I just became this TV host for a local TV channel. In a very brief moment of my life, in three, four years, my dream country. I always said I wanted to work for MTV. I was always watching MTV when I was a kid. And I was always saying, I'm going to work one day, I'm going to work on MTV.

But I never thought that was possible because this is a channel in the US. I never felt that they were going to come to Europe. I never thought they were going to come Portugal. And I never felt that was going to get out of the fortune. Talk about I'm 49. This is almost like 20, 22 years ago and it happened. Suddenly I got into MTV. Yeah.

I signed a deal with them. They launched MTV Portugal and in 2003, I just moved to London and everything was new to me. And this is the first step for me to discover the world by myself in this big company. And I was the youngest programming manager in Europe. And I suddenly, I was working with my idol. I was surrounded by them. I have daily with my idol. I was surrounded by them. I have daily conversations with them. I was seeing my heroes, artists, people that I really love.

After two weeks in London I was sitting down in coffee places and bars and clubs and hanging around with people that I admire. And this is a transformation for me. This is the transformation that I embraced for nine years almost at MTV. And I started with MTV Portugal, then I launched MTV based Africa as a mentor. I moved to MTV Italy. I launched MTV Greece, was the first licensee in Europe, first full HD channel for MTV Europe. And that was crazy.

And outside, I rem, last concert in Europe, 70,000 people to do the EMAs in Lisbon 2005, you know, 1 billion people streaming and watching it. We're already going to the direction of streaming. I think we're looking at something much much bigger than just a personal transformation. bigger than just a personal transformation. Your three-minute career story is not only your own evolution, but also a pivotal shift in the entire media and entertainment industry, from the analog world to the digital and social media age. With MTV Refiners, I'm happy with that. I know that I did a good job. I had an influence.

And when you work with a global brand that has such a huge voice, you're going to be good, if you want to be good. And I did a good thing. So I'm really happy for that. And it's really easy to work in a global brand. It's so easy because things come to you. You just have to say, I work for MTV and everything's good. Everybody opens your doors. Then comes the failure part of things.

Digital is not performing well for us. And I think the future is in the digital world. And I knew Shane Smith from Vice and I know the guys, the founders from Vice at the time. And I saw what they're doing in a very narcissistic way. And I moved to Vice because it was the CNN of the streets, as the claim said it at the time, and WPP was on board, everyone was on board. They were doing an amazing job at the time.

So I moved to Vice and from that on, I just decided, okay, I'm going to embrace technology and I'm going to basically embrace innovation. I was already working in tech since 2009, but I couldn't tell anyone. I had a sidekick. I had a friend of mine that was the founder also of this company and we were just doing projects on the sideline just for fun. It was a fun business at the time, but I was in love by tech. When

you work with a multinational global love brand, your IP, your intelligence belongs to them. You sign a waiver, it's normal. It's fine that everything that you create belongs to them. One thing I truly appreciate, and I think you'll echo this, is that working in big corporations, no matter the industry, can be an incredible training ground. The opportunities are massive with a powerful brand, lending prestige to your resume. But at the end of the day, much of what you work on isn't really your own intellectual property. With that in mind, and considering you moved on back then, I'm curious about your thought

process behind this decision. The reason I'm asking is that many of us, as we develop our career paths, face moments that are either expected or completely out of the blue. Each decision, each transition, I believe, is a delicate balance between logic and psychology. balance between logic and psychology. You mentioned earlier that while you are trained in science with a very logical mind, you're also very into art, into creative work, into philosophy. So back then, how did you navigate this balance when making career decisions? Now that's a really good question. And this is what politics say when they want to think about that question. I'm gonna just think about that question. Definitely transformation never ends. We know that transformation never ends. What was the x factor? What was the moment

that really made me change? I knew that I was a creative person. I always suffer from imposter syndrome. It's normal. I need to change. And the industry was a little bit sick at the time. And that's an episode in my life. And a lot of people don't know about this. But obviously when I moved to London, I was living in Camden Town. Camden Town is surrounded by artists. It's where everyone is. From Rackage of Aais to Amy Winehouse, everyone is there. And I was immersed by them. And I met them.

And when I saw, and I was one of the first people to introduce Amy Winehouse to 10 people in London, in the networks. Before she recorded Frank, I was listening to her songs, I was hanging around, I knew a lot of her people. We were going to the same pub, you know, Camden. We were almost neighbors. I lived in the same street as Coldplay and I was like, damn, this is wrong. This is definitely wrong. We're not doing the best we can for the people and we're not helping really creative and intelligent people like Amy Winehouse. She was one of the most beautiful people I know.

She was such a creative and talented singer. And I saw what Inglis was doing to her. As she was in the wrong place with the wrong people. A lot of people, obviously, if you go and read about Amy, you're going to see the documentaries, you're going to see their value. You're going to find out she had suffered from anorexia when she was quite young. And that's the thing is we don't care about people. We just want to do the profitable way. And another time was for that. And I was in

the beach when someone called me, I was still working for MTV, obviously. And someone calls me same ceiling that I sell punch. They call me say, look, Amy just died. I felt like when I was woke up at 5am with Michael Jackson saying Michael Jackson just died, what we're gonna do. This is what happens, you know, when we prepare ourselves for them, when you're working in networks, you prepare yourselves, you discuss new B2Wayre in the beginning of the year. And this is really bad, but this is the truth.

This is newsflash. So we prepared the B2Wayre and they think, okay, who's going to die this year? Who are the ones that are going to mentally go down the drain? And when Amy died, so maybe because I was close by and I knew her and everything, that was something that I said, no, it's not enough. It's enough. I don't want to be more. I don't want to be part of this.

I want to change that. It was quite decisive to say, look, we need to change things. And I just wanted to change things basically. Your experience reminds me of the movie Jerry Maguire. Have you seen it yourself? Your work was essentially a people-first industry. Yet oftentimes, these very people are treated more like products. products, and when you truly care about individuals as real humans with lives, worries, emotions, and inevitable endpoints, it changes everything.

Once you delve into the business aspects, as well as the personal connections with these individuals you interrupt with daily it creates a profound internal conflict i think of it as a struggle between two mindsets or the usual saying drama is the reality reality is the drama it's crazy because I always say to people reality is much way way stranger than fiction. The way that way people come to me and say, Hey, how is it work with Viacom and all that succession people think Oh, come on, this is like media moguls Game of Thrones. It's amazing. You've been there since chill man. It's not like that. It's not like that. Obviously, there's a lot of things that are inspired in real life. But real life is going to be much more complicated. It's

going to be real. It's not science. It's not fiction. Sorry. So when I think about these people, and when I think about the person that inspired Jerry Maguire, they are so kind and so humble, full of knowledge. This is what I learned from them. And they are artists of change. And they know much less. change. And they know that nothing lasts forever. They know that. Artists of change. Yes. Change is an art more than a science. You work in a media industry, it's always about the glamour, travel to all those places, parties. Yeah, slash to the hotel all the time, spend all the time in the new year.

Exactly. They pump your ego all the time. But if you want to be a pioneer, you're going to face the wall. I think we discussed things. Yeah, the wall is right there. You don't need to... It's just right there.

Exactly. It's like when you're the first person in the world to do something, you're touching the wall. It's not like I'm not going to face the wall, I'm touching the wall and I'm trying to understand the texture of the wall. And how I can grasp between the branches of the wall. You've told me before that you're all in for building a legacy. After experiencing the highs and lows of the media and entertainment industry, you've gone on to build ventures and venture ecosystems in Brazil and back home in Portugal.

A key highlight, I believe, has been your involvement with the Web Summit in Lisbon. While Patty Cosgrave might be the face and voice of the summit, you've played a crucial role at a national level, influencing the government to take a leap of faith in integrating tourism with technology. Share with us your involvement in bringing this major event to the forefront and looking at the bigger picture, what kind of legacy are you aiming to build that makes you proud? I'm a designer for society, that's what I did. Why they did happen and how they did happen. And I need to go back a little bit because Portugal was such a small country, such a

small country, and we were an event country. As I see it from my own experience in 98th, Portugal did the expo and that changed Lisbon, changed the perception. We understood the rules. We understand how to create huge events. After that, 2004, we have the Euro Cup. Again, a lot of tourism coming by, a lot of people come to Portugal. People, they saw something, some paradise. And then 2005, this is my moment. This is where I feel that I had something to do

with this. Because we have the European Music Awards, European Music Awards in Portugal and this is Lisbon come on 2005 and we had everyone we had Madonna Coldplay Robin Williams we had Borat as the host of the EMAs we had, we were live for 1 billion people. And Madonna came to Portugal and she fell in love with Portugal. And she started living in Portugal. And suddenly, Portugal just comes in the map. It was a process to go to the web summit. And I said before, we need to follow the Irish portal. The web summit was born in Dublin. Patty, Patty was the guy and it was like, now he's not the CEO, but he's still the owns the company.

And Patty, when he made a deal with the government, with the prime minister, at a time with everyone that was involved in innovation, but in the tourism of Portugal. And they were able to brought the web summit, that at the time was considered the biggest tech event in the world. We work along with the government, we work along with the secretary of innovation and meetings in Brazil with ministers. For me, that was when you're working with country

that has 220 million people and needs to be helped and needs transformation. That is unbelievable. And connecting the dots here, the web summit, when Portoleg, they called me and said, look, we want to apply to be a host city to the web summit. This was like last minute and immediately I called and I overrun the VP of Portugal I overrun it because I knew the global media partnerships of the web summit and I call her and say look what do I want to run for the web

summit yeah suddenly there was 70,000 people coming let's be out it's crazy then I'm going to mention Philip Stark don't let me go without still it start mention this one of the biggest design in the world, it lives in Portugal. There's a reason why we are the most secure country in the continent. I think we're the third right now in the world. I think we're behind Iceland, New Zealand. Our confidence is changing and we learn the empathy and the compassion to embrace other people and Philip Stark was saying this, I don't even want to work in Portugal because I don't want to destroy my paradise.

And this was such a loving, caring way of saying this. Obviously, I'm not stupid because we are a very aged country. We are surrounded by really old people, very knowledgeable, but we need younger generation. We're not able to have kids. And so basically for us, migration, it's natural. We have the biggest, the biggest community of Brazilians is obviously in Portugal due to the language. The second biggest one, it's Ukraine, Ukrainian people. And it's not because of the war, it's because they've already been here. And they helped the country to develop. The same way what happened with migration in the US in the past,

with all the brains from Germany to Jewish going to the US and bringing knowledge, bringing so much knowledge, capital, human capital and financial capital, of course, but both you have to have both elements in order for economy to grow, to develop is actually is the golden rule. Yeah, actually is a timeless golden rule. And there's no fast solutions. We know that in every kind of business, there's no fast solutions. I would love for us to be Sweden.

I was in the ecosystem in Stockholm and they are unbelievable. But they do. There are 4.5 million people. I'm not wrong in Sweden and their GDP is crazy. That level of literacy on every level. It's unbelievable. So for me, we're not still in that process at all. It's a long way to go.

But when I see mentorship and I, when I see people and I see the talent that we're developing and learning from others, because so much good people from other countries, from other continents are coming to Portugal and bringing so much good people from other countries from other Continents are coming to Portugal and bringing so much experience so much talent so much knowledge That we're evolving yesterday. I saw the young CEO. She was 27 years old She started her startup when she was 24. I was amazed or by her knowledge I I was amazed by her knowledge. I was amazed by her focus.

She was laser, major laser focus, and she was not born in Lisbon. She was not born in a portal. I think it was enough later or something like that. But the level of knowledge that she owns, it's crazy. She was 27 years old. I wanted to be her. Honestly, I was listening to her and I was seeing what she was saying. I was like, damn, you're really good. And I'm really happy for that.

That's when you asked me, what is my driven? It's all about legacy. I all, I have this, I gave an interview once and in the middle, cause I don't compare myself for, for anything of this. I just go with flow. It's my way of working because I like to be like this. Last question of the day. As a film and media executive, what advice would you give to people

who are deeply immersed in social media? People need to read books, people need to work, people need to... And right now everything's quite fast. The fear is missing out. And there's a lot of hype, I always say to people don't believe the hype, don't be blinded by the lies. This is all media and creative cliches, but it's true. Go with the curiosity mind, just go with this mindset. If you're doing that, it's already amazing because you learn so much, You're gonna learn so much. If anything like a hot topic is gonna tell you,

okay, let's try to understand crispy dishes or let's go to understand a little bit about... Thank you so much for your wise words and of course your time. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.