Fernando Gaspar Barros didn’t got down to construct an organization tradition consultancy. As an alternative, he needed to place workplace employees on stage, giving them direct recognition and motivation for at the moment’s risky instances.
The thought was simple, virtually absurdly so: what if workers at common firms shaped actual bands and carried out reside? Not simply at some awkward vacation occasion, however at an precise music competition? No lip-syncing, no DJ units, no compelled enjoyable; actual devices, rehearsals, and nerves.
He known as it Manufacturers Like Bands, and when he launched in Portugal in 2008, he had no approach of figuring out it will nonetheless be working almost twenty years later, nor that he would accomplice with the Arduous Rock Cafe – or that it will change folks’s lives in ways in which had nothing to do with quarterly targets.
“Music does something to people that a PowerPoint presentation, one person, will never do: it makes you vulnerable in front of others – and when you go through that together, something changes between all. I imagined what that same effect would manifest itself in offices,” the founder famous whereas in dialog with Startup Beat.
What he did know, nevertheless, was that essentially the most company tradition initiatives fail for a similar purpose: they ask nothing of individuals. A crew lunch, a wellness app, a values workshop – these are issues that occur to workers, not with them.
Fernando needed one thing that required real dedication, vulnerability and collaboration – that actually left a mark. And he discovered his reply in rock music.
Constructing the Idea
The mannequin Fernando developed is deceptively easy: firms join, workers volunteer to kind banks, and people bands rehearse over a number of months earlier than performing reside at a shared competition. There are not any professionals introduced in to make it sound good, as a result of the entire level is that it’s actual folks, taking part in actual music, in entrance of their colleagues.
Getting firms by way of the door was the primary problem. Fernando’s early pitches landed at banks, consulting companies, and different organizations skeptical of something that regarded prefer it may not belong in a spreadsheet.
“The first question was always what Brands Like Bands had to do with people’s business. And I answered: everything. A band that can’t communicate crumbles onstage, doesn’t create community, engagement, and loyalty; the same happens in companies,” Fernando burdened.
“Some companies told me it was too risky, too unpredictable. I told them that was exactly the goal, to innovate in the approach to companies, their people and their different generations.”
His argument was primarily this: the issues that make a fantastic band – together with belief, communication, shared objective, the flexibility to carry out beneath stress – are the identical that make a fantastic crew; and you may’t construct these issues in a convention room.
It was a compelling sufficient case. Firms – together with BMW, Harley Davidson, Diesel, Lego and Microsoft – signed on, bands shaped, and one thing surprising began occurring: workers who had by no means spoken past a hallway greeting all of the sudden spent their evenings in rehearsal studios collectively; individuals who hadn’t touched an instrument since college have been selecting them again up.
“It’s a way to meet new people that you probably see in the office and just say ‘Good morning’ to – strangers,” stated Diogo Pereira, a guide who joined his firm’s band within the competition’s first 12 months. Rehearsals, he defined, modified all of that.
“It’s not only going to the stage. We need to have some chemistry,” Pereira advised Startup Beat.
That chemistry, because it seems, has a approach of spilling past the rehearsal room: a keyboard participant at one financial institution and a vocalist at a consulting agency met at a pre-festival dinner Fernando organized – he made a degree of bringing members from totally different firms collectively earlier than the present, intentionally dissolving boundaries between organizations – and finally turned life companions.
Their son, born years later, heard his first Manufacturers Like Bands efficiency within the womb.
Fernando hadn’t designed for any of that particularly, though he had leveraged the situations that made Diogo and Claudia’s story potential.
Possession as Technique
One of the counterintuitive features of how Fernando runs Manufacturers Like Bands is his deliberate refusal to place himself on the middle of it. Fairly, he frames the competition as belonging to members, to not him; soliciting suggestions, incorporating options, and persistently telling musicians – a lot of them amateurs who haven’t performed in years – that that is their present.
“He’s always saying that this is our show, not his show,” stated Claudia Rato, the keyboard participant who turned one of many competition’s most loyal members. “I think that’s very beautiful.”
“The moment I make this about me, it all ends. People don’t participate because of someone else’s vision – they participate when the vision is theirs. I’m just the person who creates the differentiation and positioning of these companies that participate,” Fernando acknowledged.
“That’s our purpose: to deliver the best and most authentic version of the companies. What happens in it belongs to them and their people… and not just as employees.”
It’s a stance which may appear to be modesty, however can also be sensible enterprise: communities the place members really feel real possession develop organically in ways in which top-down productions merely don’t, as per a Harvard Enterprise Evaluation research.
The outcomes bear that out: the competition has developed its personal ecosystem of veterans and alumni, a few of whom have been concerned because the first version in 2012 – whereas others have moved overseas and nonetheless fly again to attend.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and reside occasions turned unattainable, members didn’t watch for Fernando to do one thing; they discovered their very own methods to maintain the spirit of Manufacturers Like Bands alive, recording house performances and sharing them throughout their firms.
Such a self-sustaining technique is what separates a neighborhood from an viewers; Fernando constructed one, not the opposite.
What Expertise Proves
Manufacturers Like Bands has now outlasted among the firms that participated in it. When certainly one of its founding bands’ employers went out of business, the band members scattered – however the relationships they’d constructed by way of music didn’t dissolve with the org chart.
“We don’t work together anymore, none of us. Still, we have a connection till today,” stated Claudia, who was a part of that band.
That sturdiness is arguably Fernando’s strongest proof of idea: company tradition initiatives are notoriously fragile, as they have an inclination to evaporate when budgets tighten, management adjustments, or the guide who designed them strikes on.
What Fernando constructed is immune to all of that exactly as a result of it doesn’t reside within the firm. Fairly, it lives within the people who participate.
The competition has additionally delivered moments that go properly past the standard return on a tradition price range. In 2022, for example, taking part bands carried out on a Rock in Rio stage, one of many largest music festivals on the earth that gathered over 700,000 followers within the Brazilian metropolis. For many of them musicians concerned – beginner gamers with day jobs in finance and consulting – it was the sort of magic they’d by no means skilled.
“The majority of Portuguese musicians that live for music dream to play there – and probably they will not,” stated Diogo. “And we were amateurs… we lived the dream.”
“I thought I was building a festival, but as it turned out, I was building a place where people could remember who they were outside of their job title. After founding the company initially in 2008, what still surprises me the most is how long its impact lasts; people carry this with them. That’s not something I designed, but something they did themselves,” Fernando additional emphasised.
The Broader Lesson
Fernando’s mannequin won’t translate immediately to each enterprise or tradition. However the ideas beneath it are extra moveable than they may seem: an important of which is actual tradition requires actual stakes – not monetary stakes, however private ones that come from standing in entrance of an viewers, for instance.
Most company tradition spending rigorously avoids that sort of publicity, however Manufacturers Like Bands is constructed totally round it.
Possession can also be not only a good sentiment, however slightly a design selection. Fernando didn’t by chance create a neighborhood that runs itself – he constructed the situations for it, persistently and intentionally by treating members as co-creators slightly than attendees.
“From the beginning, I never wanted people to just show up, watch, and leave; rather, I wanted them to feel that, without them, this wouldn’t exist… because it’s true,” stated Fernando.
“Every company that signs up, every person who picks up an instrument after fifteen years, every colleague who shows up to cheer someone on – they’re not just watching Brands Like Bands; they’re building it together and have a feeling of belonging. The moment you understand that distinction, everything about how you manage something changes.”
And third: one of the best tradition investments are those who comply with folks out the door. Abilities, friendship, reminiscences and a way of identification has nothing to do with an employment contract – these are returns that compound lengthy after an worker’s final day.
Over a decade in, Fernando continues to be working the competition he began with a easy, barely unlikely concept: the bands preserve forming, the stage filling, and someplace in Lisbon, a pair who met at his dinner desk are educating their son, Filipe, to play the drums.
“If a band we like comes to Portugal, we go. [Filipe] might not heat every note, but he feels the vibrations of the sound in a gig,” Diogo famous, as Claudia held their son on her lap.
“It’s hard to explain how much Brands Like Bands means to me. I have a deep live for the company, not only because of our story, but also because we love Fernando. We love the way he treats everyone there, the way he makes us feel so comfortable, and also the people we’ve been meeting all these years, from other companies,” concluded Claudia.
What Fernando has achieved, and what he’s got down to do in his startup’s upcoming seven-country tour – together with Portugal, Brazil, Italy, Spain and Finland – is certainly not a nasty legacy for a rock and roll experiment.
Manufacturers Like Bands’ Worldwide Tour 2026 kicked off in March in Porto on the Arduous Membership. Its subsequent present is scheduled for April 26, 2026 at Bar Manifesto in São Paulo.
Featured picture: Fernando Gaspar Barros, courtesy of Manufacturers Like Bands
Disclosure: This text mentions shoppers of an Espacio portfolio firm.
