Most people treasure their Cannes Lions award, especially their first. A Farfar creative buried theirs in the sand. The story was used in a smart piece of advertising itself. And when his local Farfar started to feel the very un-grandfatherly punches of local protectionism more directly, our Swede beat a retreat. Not just from Brazil, but from Aegis. Nick Brien scooped him up for McCann. A Swede on the board of McCann Worldgroup, Matias had an immediate impact. He called himself Nick’s “Surprise Officer”. He created a team whose role was always to make surprises. He did it deliberately because he didn’t want to be an “innovation officer”: he knew that they don’t really make change. But you could possibly surprise someone into making change. Well, maybe you could have if Nick had stayed around, but he didn’t. The game moved on. And so, again, did Matias. Has he found a home? He deserves it. When the digital world’s symbolic Swede stopped travelling and started thinking about what it meant, he was struck by – above