BRICs on the Beach
August 30th, 2007 by Hugh Kennedy
It’s summer, I’m told, and this year we packed up the dogs as well as my sister and her son (my brother-in-law was in waiting for my niece’s arrival back from doing the Silk Road thing in China), and headed for Inverness, Nova Scotia. The beach there is pretty swell, but you have to be willing to drive 14 hours from Boston to get to it.
I was determined to do a bit of beach reading, and after finding even a pop psychology book on happiness too demanding to compete with the waves and sun, I turned to the latest Vanity Fair. After the first 168 pages of ads, the editorial lurched into view. There was a wonderful story on Rudy’s new wife called “Terror Alert,” and then, right at the opening of a big puff piece on Brazil, a short essay from A.A. Gill. Only 500 words or so, but some of the best non-fiction I’ve read all year. Right there, in the middle of Gisele Bündchen’s cleavage, was a brilliant distillation of the BRIC countries:
“While we all look at the cunning power of China, with its ravenous, belching industrial revolution that consumes the world and pukes it back out cheaper and tackier; and India, with its 22nd-century I.T., 19th-century infrastructure, and 3rd-century philosophy; and Russia, with its black miser’s heart and lachyrmose marzipan soul, and a society of pitiless cruelty and exploitation, no one seems to pay much attention to the fourth member of the four horsemen of the future: Brazil.”
From an agency perspective, this may not be so surprising. Although several of us here have conducted business in China, India and Russia, held focus groups, placed media, localized creative, and so on, Brazil remains a black box. It’s hard to find a South American media partner, at least in BtoB, and even harder to find a creative partner. For many of our clients, South America in general and Brazil in particular is an afterthought.
I, for one, would welcome a change. Boston has become a huge magnet for Brazilians, and over the past 10 years several neighborhoods have started to take on a distinctive Brazilian flavor. Every Brazilian I’ve met here has been great. Why don’t more of our clients make a bigger push into Brazil, now that hyperinflation is over there and Lula seems to have the country under his spell? We’ll have to see how the BRIC r/evolution plays out.
