Conferência de Planejamento do GP 2008

I’ve been away in the last couple of weeks. So much work, no time for anything. But now I’m spending some days at my hometown and I’ll try to write a few things. The first one is about the Brazilian Planning Conference that happened some weeks ago in Sao Paulo.

The theme was (guess what?) Conversation. A cool theme for an advertising marketplace that needs to really understand this concept and re-shape the structures to start to respond to this new culture.

It was a great day, with lots of inspiring people from the client side, journalism, design, pop nerd culture, research and planning. You can have a better sense of the day looking at these pics or at Gareth’s blog here.

Albeit all of the speakers have done a great job, I’ll stick to comment four presentations that best demonstrates the thinking behind the Conversation concept in my opinion.

The first is about Nike, represented by its head of marketing in Brazil, Tiago Pinto. Once more, the brand proved why it knows how to make things happen. Nike is all about connecting to the culture of each sport they are into. Plus, it really knows how people behave in each culture because the company participates running, playing and skateboarding with them in Brazil.

This is a brand that understands their folks are more interested in things that provide social currency for them to share and connect with their peers. So Nike provides what makes conversation. In two ways: between the brand and its consumers and between consumer-to-consumer. The usage of events, utility and content is the way to reach a broader goal of making the dialogue happens.

My second comment is about a nice surprise and a refreshingly voice coming from Fred Gelli, founder of Tatil Design. His approach on conversation was related to the ongoing thinking brands must have on a more eco-conscious and sustainable society. But his speech wasn’t an “eco-boring” thing, rather a very inspiring way of considering Bionic as a powerful learning for industry and brands. Besides, his stuff showed how designers have a different (and in many cases, a broader) mindset to brand thinking.

His first point has to do with cycles: how nature doesn’t throw energy away and how it designs for the long-term perspective. The opposite of the industrial consumerism thinking that has the short-term perspective and lots of wastefulness problems. His second point was on how Bionic leads to new solutions. To make that closer for the planners in the room, he made a brilliant correlation of flowers as the most successful nature’s brand experience. Because flowers changed, optimized and romanticized nature’s procreation process. Than he showed some slides with similarities on brand experiences and flowers. Beautiful and sensitive stuff.

As sensitive are the two planners who spoke over there. Two of the guys who are trying hard on the quest to move planning forward: Adrian Ho and Gareth Kay. Of course they have a similar view on the planning issue, but it was very interesting to hear how one is trying to change not just planning, but his whole agency and how the other had to quit the ad business to start doing things instead of advising in the conversation reality.

Gareth’s main point is that planning needs planning. It means that this discipline needs to re-evaluate itself and must be radical in terms of attitude and approach on doing that. It starts by the comprehension that the business we operate in is culture and not communication or branding. Then it evolves to the notion that we need to translate the other way back, bringing social grammar into the commercial world and not keeping the translation of commercial into social. Where, finally, brand is measured by its energy and not by some static attributes like awareness.

Gareth defends that energy is what drives conversations. Something that makes lots of sense to me if we think this is the leading indicator of usage and preference, something essential to a friend endorsement, for instance. So, planning outcome naturally shifts for brands to: have a social/cultural point of view, be additive and not interruptive, to interact not just integrate (I would say lots of agencies really have to learn this one) and do stuff, lots of them.

Underlying his main point is the fact that in today conversation world messaging is gone. And this may be the great issue of this whole industry we are part of. Digital and design are free from it, for instance. Messaging isn’t part of these discipline’s roots, just part of advertising roots. I’m the one saying that, but Adrian presented his case of liberating from the messaging paradigm.

Zeus Jones came from two “personal failures”, as Adrian put. Based on personal experiences, they (he and his partners) sow that advertising (massaging) was limiting the power of their strategy. Even if they had a brilliant insight and a deeper strategy concerning product and other touch-points of the brand experience, at the end of the day, they were stuck in the ad pieces square. Not accidentally, Zeus Jones is focused on doing things not saying things. Their belief is that marketing only exist as service and that there is not as important as the experience of using the product.

Personally, it was a great opportunity I had to listen to some guys and brands I already was an admirer. Professionally, I’ll continue to support the conversation idea. It’s essential that Brazilian advertising understands this shift for our own sake. Conversation requires more strategy, new approaches and renewal minds on agency and client sides. Just as a last thing, look why Crispin as Creativity’s agency of the year has everything to do with the conversation age.

How technology is changing the face of Brazil

The way low-income classes in Brazil are embracing technology and the internet is just amazing. So interesting that a very popular TV show in the country, Fantástico, has covered what happens where these people live and how they use the web.

You can see both of the materials below. It’s in portuguese, but even for you who read it outside Brazil it worths taking a look to understand the contextual references of people I’m talking about and the place they live (each video has 10 minutes). See here and here.

The most interesting thing about the role of internet for low-income classes is that it is not just a mean of digital inclusion, but A MEAN FOR SOCIAL AND CULTURAL INCLUSION.

I believe that there are 3 major things about this phenomena that worth some lines:

The LAN HOUSE phenomenon

The Lan House is where people from the “comunidade” (community, their neighborhood area in the suburbs) go to have internet access. Inside the neighborhood there are lots of them (more than 90k all over Brazilian suburbs).

Although in the last few years the computer penetration has largely grown in the low-income segment in Brazil, the internet access is still limited. Largely it’s because of the price, but in some cases also because the difficulty companies have to make it viable.

Nice to say that the Lan Houses are not simply the place for internet access, but also it’s a place for SOCIAL interactions and exchanges within the community.

How people are using the web

As the videos show, these are simple people. Generally they don’t have a strong educational basis, do not make much money, work for the richer classes. But these people are the ones who best reflect some attributes of the Brazilian spirit: happy, creative, social, faithful.

Their web usage reflects it. Socialnets are extremely popular. Low-income people want and like to be on the social communities making themselves noticeable. Orkut is the main socialnet in Brazil with a huge amount of the minor classes users. Msn Messenger is another very popular tool that quick spreads among this segment. But other social web sites like Youtube, Flickr, Fotologs and even blogs are getting important and used.

The interesting point is that people use those tools in a very creative way. Its the case of turning the Orkut and Msn Messenger into business spaces. Like the nail manicure that takes pictures of her service and upload it so her Orkut friends and others could see her work and call for it. Or the case of the boy who created his car profile selling it. Or the pizza restaurant where you call for a pizza via Msn Messenger so the customer doesn’t have the cost of a phone call and the business doesn’t have the cost of buying a phone line.

What they get is what they see – and they see far

Here is where it lies the biggest insight low-income people have about the internet. Because they don’t have the same access to education, health and security in comparison to the higher classes, they don’t have so much opportunity as the others.

But this logic changes with the internet. This is a place that allows everything; that provides content and learning, that allows to express and raise their voice and culture, that incentives new and creative forms of making money, that connects the people from “comunidades” with the world.

So, for the marginalized low-income person, the internet brings and make it touchable the idea of EQUALITY. People feel it, know it and are using it to gather the opportunities the system used to keep away

Because of this insight, I believe we are about to see main changes on the internet usage in Brazil in a near future. Something that will impact not just brands and communication, but the market creating a need to design new business models considering people that is out of the radar today.