I was reading an interesting blog from the guerrilla marketing firm Espalhe, who blogs about (from what I can gather) marketing genius in Brazil and their own smart ads as well. From browsing through their blog, one sees how creative Brazilians are. While in the process of browsing around, I found a somewhat recent vintage TAM marketing stunt, which for a second I thought was their actual video from the 70′s.
Espalhe interviewed (in PT)
“Starbucks Corporation has just announced that it is taking control of Starbucks Brazil. The company has assumed 100% ownership and 100% operating control of Starbucks Brazil through the acquisition of Cafés Sereia do Brasil Participações S.A. In short, Starbucks is ready to expand into a huge market.
Starbucks noted that the management team currently in place will continue to manage day-to-day business operations to keep a seamless transition.
Converting Brazil to a company-operated business will allows Starbucks to gain access to the largest consumer market in South America. Whether you choose to use Wikipedia data is up to you, but the Wikis list Brazil as being #17 by coffee consumption per capita at 5.81 kilograms per person. The U.S. was down at #26 at 4.2 kg per year. The Brazilian population was listed as 193.39 million versus 310 million in the U.S.
When you consider that Starbucks counted some 16,737 stores globally between its licensed stores and company owned stores, this won’t make a huge dent at “more than 20 stores.” It makes growing its Brazilian operations probably much easier. It also gets it closer to the largest coffee growing market on top of its deep relationships with coffee growers throughout the world.
If you consider how many Starbucks were opened up in the U.S., the notion that Starbucks ran into growth problems won’t matter here. Starbucks first entered Brazil in Sao Paolo in November-2006 with two store openings.” – Source
I’m going to try out some different things here on Eyes On Brazil in the coming months and one of those things will be 5 Questions, a short interview session with Brazil bloggers as well as bloggers from Brazil. I will ask questions that shed light on the Brazilian point of view (or the non-Brazilian while living in Brazil point of view) and try to focus on a topic that interests them. Here’s the pilot interview, it’s with Fábio from English This Way, whose blog provides English language help to Brazilians (and anyone who wants to learn).
1. So, you’re a carioca, right? What do you think about the Olympics and the World Cup coming to Brazil and how Rio is changing because of it? On one hand it’s a good thing because it will generate jobs, especially tourism. On the other hand, it’s a bad thing because the government is spending a lot of money on infrastructure that we know will be abandoned after the games. Brazilians have a sort of complex and have to show to the world that we are here. We exist. The government should spend this amount of money on education and health. But that doesn’t make you visible abroad.
2. You blog about language over at English This Way, what inspired you to start doing that? I am an English teacher and I noticed that English books don’t cover a lot of words and expressions that we use in everyday life. Students like to ask about simple words and phrases like “lampshade”, “ceramic tile”, etc.
3. Do the Brazilians you know have an interest in English? Or are they only interested in it because Brazilian companies look for such a skill? Most of them are only interested because of job opportunities. I hear quite often from students how they hate English, but it is the international language, the language that will open doors and enhance their resumes. Middle-class families enroll their kids in language schools when they are young, around 6-8 years old and they study it for like 10 years. But there are other cases when an adult never had the opportunity to study before or never cared about it, but then they realize that they need it for their job and enroll in a language school or take private classes. In most cases students don’t like English because it’s imposed on them. It wouldn’t be their first choice if they could really choose.
4. I hear the state of Rio just opened up a hotline for Brazilians to ask grammar questions. How important is such a service? I am not sure if this will catch on. There’s already radio shows that help people with grammar and also special books sold at newsstands. There’s no need to have a hotline.
5. Brazilian Portuguese uses a number of anglicisms in everyday speech. Many languages have been influenced by other languages but is there a point where it starts to be too much? Language influence has always happened throughout history. I think it’s worse when you try to be purist and start ignoring such neologisms. France tried to do that years ago and I read somewhere that Brazil did too in the 18th century. There was a campaign against words like ‘football’, that were new at the time. Brazilian purists tried to translate it, but it never caught on. One thing that I am not very happy about is when I hear people using words translated from English when we have an option in Portuguese. In fashion now, for example, is ‘customizar’ because of the verb ‘customize’, but there is the verb ‘personalizar’.
“In Guaratinga, a city 390 kilometers from Salvador, near Eunápolis, in the south of the state, there was practically no rain in June, but the city council alleged that the city suffered from flooding from June 15th-17th and called for a state of emergency. According to the Public Ministry, the fraud was committed in order to obtain R$2 million in federal funds, to be applied to public works that were to be done without bidding.
The fraud was only discovered because the promotor Bruno Gontijo Teixeira didn’t trust the information. To check it, he used data from the National Institute of Meteorology, which confirmed that the volume of water during the period was practically zero.
The Military Police filed a civil action against the mayor for administrative misconduct. If condemned, he will have to reimburse the amount received and can have his political rights suspended. The city council is forbidden from using the money.” – Source (in PT)
My Take
I’m not sure the phrasing is right, that the mayor may be punished because it definitely shouldn’t be just a possibility. He should get jail time. What happens when the city really needs federal funds? Will there always be a promotor there to double-check the facts?
My post several months ago on the 90 or so Brazilian films I had seen up until that time has received quite a lot of attention since its publishing. The strange part is I can only tell that based on its view count, not the initial comments (meaning the views keep increasing but the comments stopped early on). Just as secretly as people have been viewing it, I have secretly been updating the list every month or so and now it stands at 121 films (90%+ which I recommend watching). Here’s the list once more, updated of course, for your browsing pleasure.
Not many people know that the Robert Frost poem entitled ‘The Road Not Taken’ has two interpretations. One is more literal and common, which says the poem is non-conformist while the other, widely held by critics, speaks to regret at having taken the wrong road. While not being a pessimist, I tend to agree with the critics and as I close in on completing 100 posts and 5 months over at Eyes On Brazil on the Blogger platform, I’ve been monitoring monthly views and reader participation against what it was here on WordPress. The result is striking.
The difference in monthly views over 5 months was higher on WordPress by a factor of 15…so that being said, it’s about time I return, even if that means the vanity URL eyesonbrazil.com will still go to Blogger for a bit longer. You will find that I have transfered just the newer posts and comments to WordPress already.
I apologize for the turbulence. Let’s get things back on track.
“Rio de Janeiro state in Brazil has set up a grammar hotline to help people who have difficulties using Portuguese. Experts will field questions about topics such as spelling and the use of accents in Portuguese, the official language of Brazil. Correspondents say Brazilians are sensitive about making grammatical errors, which are often associated with a lack of education.
The announcement was published in the Rio state assembly’s official gazette. According to the gazette, eight qualified language experts will be on call from Monday to Friday to answer questions about issues including syntax, word formation and verb and noun agreement.” – Source (more here)
My Take
This one came out of left field, kind of like the international TV station…for Africa. Is it possible that that many people in Rio have the need for such a service or for part of the state budget to go towards eight full-time language experts? I think Rio should take a page out of the Porto Alegre book and instate participatory budgeting so actual residents can decide where the money goes. Just an idea…
“According to the NTU (National Association of Public Transport Companies), public transport is responsible for the movement of 59 million passengers in Brazil. For Ailton Brasiliense, a 35-year veteran researcher of public transport and employed by the NTU, the low investment reflects itself in the pocketbooks of Brazilians.
- The lack of exclusive avenues for buses, the bumper-to-bumper traffic, bad streets and highways, and a general lack of city planning, pushed the population to the edges of the city, making long bus trips necessary and contributing to the high fares. Since there’s no investment, many passengers stop using public transport and buy old cars. What that means is more traffic, pollution and a fall in the quality of life in the cities, basically chaos. ” – Source
My Take
That was an excerpt from a story that ran in O Globo today about how some of the people who come to work by bus often can’t pay to return home at the end of a long day. Needless to say, I’ve been there, except I spent the initial bus fare on food. Anyways, the article then spans out to look a bit at the bigger picture, which is what I chose to translate above. I must say that if 37 million people per week can’t pay the bus fare to return home, then accepting to be heavily involved and invested in major world sporting events shouldn’t be the first priority. Then again, it’s all about making returns on the government’s bets and, for them, shelling out billions to improve the lives of average citizens, who want nothing more than to be productive and feed their families, will not generate the right kind of return on their investment. Of course, the influx of foreign interest tied in with capital from the government and big business will create jobs in Brazil but I think an analogy for what is happening can explain things better.
If I were to list the Eyes On Brazil articles with the most views on the sidebar for readers to click on, that would do what, exactly? It would make those articles become even more widely-read and thereby create a cycle of popularity and a high likelyhood of reinvestment in such articles. Using this example, my most-viewed articles are like the neighborhoods of the Zona Sul in Rio, and the articles that no one sees or remembers, the periphery. Now do those low views have to do with a lack of structural soundness and personal investment in the ‘bad’ articles? Did I not write them well enough or source them from reputable places? Can I improve those articles by reworking the words I already wrote or must I erase everything in order to look at things freshly? The only way out and upward is to admit my mistakes, address the issues and get to work on writing a better piece. First, though, I have to care.
“A world without documents, passwords, magnetic cards, where people are recognized by DNA, the shape of the face, iris, fingerprint, palm, tone of voice, way of walking and talking. This is how the banking industry has been enhanced to combat organized crime, which entered the digital age and enlisted the world’s best hackers to steal passwords and steal millions.
To differentiate customers from fraudsters, banks have chosen the path of biometrics, the statistical study of physical characteristics, decreeing the end of the dictatorship of passwords, access letters and tokens, the electronic key chains that display a password that changes in seconds to access internet banking.
To fight crime, banks have been seeking advice using the other side of the fraudsters intelligence. By hiring “ethical hackers”, converted to good side. This is the story that Toni Sciarretta reveals in Folha on Sunday.
In the video below, see the most advanced biometric technology in Brazil: the reading of the veins in the palm, adopted by Bradesco. At the bank, 10% of ATMs are already equipped with hand readers. Almost all agencies now have at least one reader.” – Source (see video here)
My Take
So basically what they are saying is that theives will now just carry around big machetes. Nevermind that, because I would totally be willing to hand over my DNA to a large corporation! Yay! While they are at it, they can chip me too, in case I get lost…and oh why not, read my thoughts (oops, wait a sec, that’s what ‘status updates’ are for on social networks).
I just learned a new phrase for saying a woman is a plain Jane. I haven’t confirmed if this is applied to men as well but I wouldn’t see why not. It seems to go like this, since salt is seasoning and seasoning generally makes food more appealing or interesting, then to say someone is without salt, means they’re boring.
Ex. Ela é muito sem sal e não sei o que ele vê nela.
Ex. She is such a plain Jane and I don’t know what he sees in her.
You may also see “sem sal, nem açúcar” which is basically the same, meaning without salt, nor sugar.
