Raluca Kovacs has spent 25 years in advertising doing the one thing she loves most — solving problems with creativity. She started planning in her 20s at McCann Bucharest, overseeing major brands like Nestlé and Heineken, and hasn’t stopped since. A few lucky breaks along the way turned into something she’s genuinely proud of: helping brands find their mojo and shout their truth. She helped Aqua Carpatica become an undisputed category leader with work that earned a Gold Cannes Lion, a Grand Effie, and a D&AD White Pencil — an award celebrating creativity used as a force for real-world good.
In 2014, she joined Publicis as Chief Strategy Officer with a simple brief: build a team worth bragging about. She got to work, and the team grew into one of the 3rd most effective planning departments in Europe according to Effie. Along the way, she helped win the regional Coca-Cola business across 28 CEE countries and later led global work across the network. The agency earned some of its best accolades during that period — Agency of the Year at Golden Drum, Effie, and Internetics, among others.
In 2024, she decided to go independent. She founded Punk — a creative agency shaking up healthcare — and Better, a strategy studio where she solves business problems with creativity. The team is small and international by design: people who’ve spent decades admiring and envying each other’s work. If you have an exciting problem, she’d genuinely love to hear it.
