Advertising In BrazilBy:LaKenya Robinson

7th Period

The Place of Advertising in Brazilian Society

Nowadays ad agencies in Brazil include three major types. First, many well-known multinational agencies like BBDO, DDB, Draftfcb, Grey, JWT, Leo Burnett, McCann Erickson, Ogilvy, TBWA, Saatchi and Saatchi, and Y&R have a strong presence in Brazil and service multinational accounts as well as some local ones. Second, there are many smaller home-grown agencies whose clients are primarily local. Third, there are a small number of extraordinarily successful Brazilian agencies (including Africa, Almap, DM9, and W/Brasil) that grew up in the last two decades and enjoy distinction as some of the world's most creative agencies. São Paulo is both the primary business capital of Brazil and the nerve center of Brazilian advertising.

The Run-Up to the Creative Boom

In 1929, the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency of New York opened an office in São Paulo, bringing with it the international advertising standards of the time that included the latest market strategies and research techniques. The ostensible reason for this expansion into Brazil was to service its major client, General Motors, which had just opened a manufacturing plant in Brazil. Similar GM plants and accompanying JWT offices were opened in more than 20 locations around the world during the 1920s. Another American agency, N.W. Ayer & Son, established offices wherever the Ford Motor Company had its manufacturing plants. McCann Erickson, whose client was Standard Oil, soon followed.

Why Is Brazilian Advertising So Creative?

When Marcello Serpa, 45-year-old Partner and Creative Director of the Almap/BBDO agency in São Paulo and one of Brazil's most famous admen, talks about the history of creativity in Brazilian advertising, he begins with the 1960s when the media outlets for ads, especially television, began to assume their present forms. Rather than creating advertising space to accommodate demand as happened in some other countries, the ratio of commercials to programming on Brazilian national television was fixed from the beginning. Airtime has always been sold in blocks to ad agencies, and this fact has produced a highly predictable and relatively stable media situation

Three Leaders in Brazilian Advertising

Washington Olivetto- In 1986 Olivetto started to run the new GGK office in São Paulo. Under Olivetto's leadership, the agency's billings increased exponentially. In 1989, Olivetto and his business partners bought the company and renamed it W/Brasil. Today it is one of the best-known Brazilian agencies.

Nizan Guanaes- Guanaes opened DM9, his first advertising agency, in 1990. Three years later, DM9 won the Grand Prix at Cannes. The award put both Brazil and DM9 on the "who's who" of world advertising.

Marcello Serpa-Partner and Creative Director of Almap/BBDO He is also one of the stars of contemporary Brazilian advertising, the first to claim a Grand Prix at Cannes. The year was 1993, and Serpa was an art director at Guanaes's company, DM9, in São Paulo.

Exporting CreativityBrazilian creativity has been exported to other countries in two important ways. First, the best of Brazilian advertising is seen around the world as a result of the various competitions in which it is entered. Creative people pay attention to all sorts of artistic work —movies, photography, music, art, etc.—and frequently draw on it for their own inspiration. The latest Hollywood hit or music video or Brazilian ad that won at Cannes might turn up elsewhere—albeit transformed—just as the animal photographs in the New York show inspired the Brazilian Parmalat campaign

Conclusion

Brazil's position as a world leader in advertising creativity was earned through hard work, borrowing and remaking ideas from abroad, focusing on visual communications over the written word, and a generous portion of artistic talent. Many other national advertising traditions strive to imitate Brazilian advertising. Along with the other BRIC countries (Russia, India, and China), Brazil's economy is as vital to the global economy as its advertising tradition is to global marketing

Bibliography http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/

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