How to Avoid Shadow Marketing in Brand Governance
Victor Dellorto, CEO of Deskfy, discusses the challenge of granting local autonomy without losing brand control.
Victor Dellorto details how misalignment between headquarters and local units triggers shadow marketing in retail and franchises. The Deskfy founder shares key insights on leadership, briefing processes, and the role of artificial intelligence in corporate routines.
Victor Dellorto, founder and CEO of Deskfy, spoke with Bruno Gimenes on Marketing - The Podcast about brand governance, operational decentralization, and the factors that lead local branches to create marketing materials on their own.
In the video above, the full conversation explores the behind-the-scenes journey of building the platform and breaks down management case studies across major retail chains.
Lessons from Basketball for Leadership and the Corporate World
Playing sports in his youth shaped Dellorto's approach to management. Looking back at his time on the court, he highlights how team sports foster the ability to listen and understand each player's role in delivering collective results.
"I think one of the biggest lessons I learned from basketball is that the bench plays just as hard as the players on the court. And it makes a massive difference when the bench is engaged," Dellorto says, comparing sports team dynamics to corporate organizations.
From Modeling in Asia to Entrepreneurial Growth
Before entering the technology market, Dellorto began modeling at age eight in Brasília and moved to Asia at sixteen to pursue an international career. Living in the East broadened his cultural perspective and influenced his philosophy on work methodologies.
Reflecting on his years living outside Brazil, he points to his exposure to Eastern thought and Confucian philosophy as key influences that he later integrated into his entrepreneurial journey and team-building practices.
What Deskfy Is and the Challenges of Multi-Location Marketing
Deskfy was founded to solve the operational complexity faced by brands with third-party points of sale, such as franchise networks, corporate-owned stores, and distributor channels. Dellorto explains that corporate headquarters often face severe operational bottlenecks when managing hundreds of locations with lean central teams.
"It is not uncommon to find marketing teams of four people managing brand strategy for 700 retail locations. Deskfy solves that equation; it provides the missing link you need to achieve brand consistency and strategic alignment," explains Dellorto.
Briefings, Workflows, and the Role of AI in Brand Identity
The quality of marketing outputs depends directly on clarity and discipline during the planning phase. Dellorto emphasizes that a lack of technical groundwork and request screening leads to excessive rework and dilutes campaign objectives.
Assessing the rise of generative AI, Dellorto argues that automated tools deployed without proper context create generic uniformity. "Everything that has remained manual has gained value because it has become scarce," he highlights, stressing that human creativity becomes even more critical when the market is flooded with high-volume, soulless content.
Organizational Culture and Blending SAP with Startup Agility at Deskfy
His tenure at SAP gave Dellorto deep expertise in enterprise workflows, mission-critical support, and design thinking certification. When founding Deskfy alongside Lucas Brown, the goal was to combine multinational governance structures with the speed and ownership mindset of a startup.
According to Dellorto, applying design thinking enabled the platform to map real pain points across diverse sectors—from pharmaceutical and fashion retail to credit unions—maintaining active listening to develop scalable solutions.
Shadow Marketing: Balancing Local Autonomy and Brand Governance
The concept of shadow marketing describes situations where points of sale create off-brand, improvised assets because a centralized marketing team becomes a bottleneck and fails to deliver local assets on time. Pressing demands like expiring inventory, regional weather shifts, and localized tax differences require an agility that central teams often cannot match.
For Dellorto, the purpose of multi-location marketing technology is to equip frontline teams with tools to customize regional promotions within predefined visual guidelines. "When you have Deskfy, providing full visibility and giving them the ability to customize an asset without breaking brand guidelines, you satisfy the brand's standards while meeting frontline needs," he concludes.