The bustling beat of Brazil

Gabriel Aleixo recovers from the Rio Carnival and rejoices in the vibrant growth of the Brazilian economy

Tudo bom? I don’t want to make you jealous as it’s not the Brazilian way but it’s late summer here, and we’re still recovering from the onerous business of Carnival partying, where 80% of the annual beer consumption takes place in about a week and about five million people gather to party in Rio alone. This year, we had more than usual to celebrate, having been surprised to hear we’ve become the world’s sixth largest economy behind France and ahead of the UK. I think the fact we were slightly surprised says a lot about Brazil and the way things are here.

For a start, we don’t tend to keep score, unless it’s a football match of course and we tend to look towards America rather than our neighbours for comparison and aspiration. We know we’re the biggest economy in South America and we’re proud of being part of the BRIC growth phenomena but we’re also self-consciously small compared with the USA and we tend to ignore China in case we get a complex about its scale too. And, to be honest, 2011 felt like a tough year here with growth slowing from 7.5% to just over 5%.

"Tchau, boa sorte. Perhaps because of the bumper-to-bumper traffic and the extremes of wealth, São Paulo has the world’s largest fleet of helicopters"

As a middle-class person who went to school in the 1980s, I’m of a generation who were always told ‘Brazil is the country of the future’, but we stopped believing it because it never appeared to come true, with decades of economic mismanagement and impeached Presidents. So to discover we’ve overtaken one of the major economies of the world was a thoroughly pleasant surprise, creating a great deal of positive press comment and reappraisal of the government’s record. I have calculated that even at 5% growth per year our economy would grow from roughly £2,000bn to £3,000bn by 2020 while the UK at the current 0.2% would grow from £2,000bn to just £2,030bn.

I live in São Paulo, which by our own admission is perhaps one of the ugliest cities in the world but it has a wonderful vibe so we forgive it almost everything. We tend to say people go to São Paulo to work and Rio to party but in fairness they have their fair share of both. Even the football rivalry is within the states more than between them. In São Paulo the rivalry being between the best team of course, Corrinthians, and the distinctly lame Palmeiras.

As the business capital, São Paulo is where most multinationals have their HQs, and apart from the grid-locked traffic it’s a great place to live.

Perhaps because of the bumper-to-bumper traffic and the extremes of wealth, São Paulo’s claim to fame is that it has the world’s largest fleet of helicopters. Unfortunately I’ve not yet managed to persuade the BrainJuicer bosses that a chopper is standard company issue here – I will have to keep working on that one.

When it comes to marketing and market research, we’re full of contradictions. We’re American in our love of long and frequent ad breaks but four years ago in São Paulo we banned outdoor advertising completely. I’d love to say it made the city a more beautiful place but I’m not sure anything could do that. We’re famously proud of our beautiful women but last year a lingerie advert with our very own supermodel Giselle Bundchen was banned for being sexist, which was an interesting sign of the times.

Brazil has always had a creative spirit and in recent years ad agencies here have won a number of awards at Cannes and managed one of the top- 20 best ads of 2010/11. Now, I don’t want to get competitive again, but the UK failed to get any ads in the top 20, so perhaps it’s not just the economy that’s slipping. The advertising and research scene here also follows the US model, with 81 million people connected to the internet. It’s a sophisticated market with more and more research done online. And the high growth makes for confident, innovation-focused buyers who are keen to adopt the latest techniques.

If all this tempts you to set up an office in Brazil, just about the only downside is we love taxes here. In fact we love them so much that most businesses pay several of them, amounting to an overall rate of around 34%; but at least much of this is being successfully redistributed and bringing more and more people out of poverty.

I hope the Olympics works out well for you this year; we don’t really do running and jumping and all that caper but we’re looking forward to showing you how to play football here at the next World Cup.

Gabriel Aleixo, managing director, BrainJuicer Brazil

[email protected]