Brazil: Overview; The Aliens Are Coming

There are a few nutty aspects to Brazil’s advertising scene with its 90s-style use of mediums, TV-crazy consumers and quirky media buying but, as Joe Lancaster reveals, business and creativity has been booming and newcomers are flocking from abroad

If aliens hovered above Brazil in search of the country’s most creative minds they’d probably take one look at the capital, point their spaceship northeast and head to Rio. On the surface, São Paulo, which has a population of more than 11 million, looks like a concrete rainforest clogged by static rivers of traffic that cough out a thick cloud of pollution hanging glumly above a nondescript skyline. Even the locals admit that São Paulo is the ugly sister to Rio’s Cinderella.

But scratch that surface in the right places and you’ll find pulsating nightlife, waistline-bothering food, groundbreaking urban artists, intense sporting passion and locals who welcome foreigners with open arms and kisses on the cheek. All of this inspires and has bred one of the world’s greatest hotbeds of creativity, something reflected in Brazil’s fourth place in the Cannes Lions country rankings, with 65 trophies in 2011.

The majority of those Lions came in the more traditional categories of Print, Outdoor, Press and Film though, and, from the outside, it seems that Brazil is stuck in the 90s when it comes to advertising. Despite the irony of outdoor advertising being banned in São Paulo, that medium, along with print, is still hugely important here for two reasons; one being that the population is slightly behind other markets in the devices they consume media with, and the other being the way agencies handle all their clients’ media buying here, which means that investing time in producing integrated campaigns can be fruitless. “The way the business survives in Brazil is not based on big client fees where you bill by the hour. It’s about the amount of media you buy, mostly on TV – that’s where you make the money. So with this structure, anything you do outside of this system is free work,” says Icaro Doria, ECD at Wieden + Kennedy São Paulo.

Every night’s a Super Bowl

Thanks to the might of Globo – the broadcasting and media company, so large that some people believe it’s responsible for selecting the country’s President – there’s a Super Bowl-like audience every night in Brazil, with around 40-60 million viewers (figures seem to vary) tuning in for the channel’s nightly soap opera. “We have to come up with modern ideas like agencies in other countries, but where TV has a central role. We have to incorporate both,” says Roberto Fernandez, creative director at JWT São Paulo.

Despite it making digital campaigns tricky, W+K and all the other agencies seem to love the media buying system. “I think it’s the best way of working because you have everything in-house rather than separated. When you hold a meeting everything is integrated,” says Marcello Serpa, partner and CCO at AlmapBBDO, Cannes Lions’ 2011 Agency of the Year.

Even though traditional mediums still reign supreme currently, digital advertising is beginning to creep into the Brazilian zeitgeist thanks to the country’s booming economy, which has promoted 40 million citizens to the C class on the socio-economic scale. That’s a group of people equal to the population of Argentina who have suddenly been able to afford home computers and smart phones. “I don’t believe TV commercials will disappear but the traditional programme-break-programme format is changing. The world is changing,” says João Daniel Tikhomiroff, director and EP at production company Mixer. “In Europe you have TV on demand, and TiVo etc. I think one day that will come to Brazil.”

One way to bridge the gap between old and new media is to run a campaign that uses the former, but provokes a reaction on the latter. That’s just what the agency Loducca did with a number of daring and innovative campaigns this year, including print advertising for Peugeot where 50,000 real, working airbags were inserted into a popular magazine to make safety seem fun. For the same client there was a print ad that could be screwed up and used to wax surfboards. “We’re always trying to prove that a magazine can be interactive,” says creative director Guga Ketzer. Loducca also made an edible print ad for MTV and invented TwitTV – an online TV channel that finds and streams videos related to what is trending on Twitter in real time. JWT São Paulo also thought outside the box with a campaign for Coca-Cola that involved recording the Coke jingle as a single, but with the lyrics spelling ‘go-oh-oh-oh-al’. It caught on and was sung by football fans at live games, becoming so popular that people thought it was the national team’s official song (the real one bombed).

Local films for local people

The Brazilian production landscape has changed significantly in the last 12 months and that is set to continue going into 2012. In January a law will pass that will charge a R$200,000 fee for any production shot by a foreign client outside Brazil to be screened there. This is intended to protect the local economy, as until now agencies have often gone abroad – usually to Argentina – to shoot their clients’ campaigns because it’s cheaper and the production industry there has a good reputation. The cash raised from the new law will go towards funding Brazilian feature films and other projects, which should provide opportunities for local talent like directing duo Jones+Tino. However, they, and seemingly everybody in the industry, think it’s a bad idea.

Perhaps looking to sidestep these rules, several Argentinian production houses have opened branches in São Paulo recently. One such example is Ursula, who will be in partnership with, and based at, the HQ of local company Dinamo. “We cannot compete with guys from Argentina. It’s better to work with them,” says Ricardo Carelli, director and managing partner.

Others see the challenge differently, as Paulo Henrique Miranda, business director at Film Planet, explains: “Some may see the arrival of Argentine companies as a threat to our production, however, the flip side is that only the best companies will survive in Brazil due to the expertise of their directors. I believe it [is] time we had some hardcore competition in this market. I hope it pushes Argentina and Brazil to raise the standards of talent and start competing for creativity and not only for bargains.” Film Planet has been dealing with the changes in the market by repositioning its brand, Miranda explains: “There was a time when we needed physical presence everywhere in order to confirm our capabilities to produce and work abroad. It was the beginning of being global. But the world got smaller and so did we, productions are done in partnerships, creativity happens all over the place. We’re working on the concept of a smaller planet, where our offices all over the world become think tanks for all sorts of productions – small, efficient and accessible. Our expertise will be shared with anyone willing to cooperate even if they come from other areas or even other companies.”

Knocking on Brazil’s door

While some of these offices seem to be just satellites, others are not, according to Ciro Silva, EP at newly opened Rebolucion São Paulo: “We’re a Brazilian production company, not just an office of an Argentinian one.” He also believes that “international agencies are getting comfortable shooting with us [local prod cos] without a middle man in their own territory.” It’s not just foreign production houses who’ve come to Brazil though. Several notable US agencies have set up shop in São Paulo recently, including Brooklyn Brothers and W+K. And after just 12 months the latter has made a positive impact.

Last year was a stellar one for Brazil’s economy and ad scene, one that would be hard to beat. With big changes and exciting times ahead it’ll be intriguing to see whether 2011 can be surpassed.