Dcio Freitas also talks about the market transformations generated by the growth of the digital world
Mutato is completing a decade of history. Created by partners Andre Passamani and Eduardo Camargo, the agency was born in 2012 as a digital startup of the WPP Group in Brazil. Today, it has around 200 employees and offices in So Paulo and Buenos Aires. Its customer base includes major brands such as Samsung, Ambev, Amazon Prime Video, Jack Daniels, Mercado Pago, Ipiranga, Waze and Ipanema.
In the interview, the agency’s partner and business VP, Dcio Freitas, talks about the market transformations generated by the growth of the digital world and cites some examples of campaigns created by the agency with full interaction on the platforms. He says that brands today have to engage more and more with people through dialogue, because the response is immediate. Graduated in social communication from ESPM, Freitas worked ten years at JWT before arriving at Mutato.
transformation
In the last ten years, the transformation I have seen in the market is not comparable to what I experienced in the previous ten years when I was already working in advertising. Now you do it and throw it away and do it again. Brands are forced to interact with people. The nature of communication about it, we are already an evolution of it. The brand has an obligation to respond, today it has to engage people more and more with dialogue. Now, brands are charged with a point of view. It is not enough just to occupy space in communication. They have to position themselves as content creators.
content
It no longer works just what the brand wants to say, but what people want to hear. The content issue has become stronger than ever. When I started at Mutato, social networking was just a trainee thing. Today, central point in any advertiser’s strategy. Even offline agencies, if they don’t know how to interact on digital platforms, don’t sustain themselves. Dialogue fundamental. Today, we see the emergence of several independent agencies, which are already born digital. They arise at a time when offline has become just another medium among many others.
platforms
Today brands need, above all, to dialogue with people and it is the digital platforms that offer this space. We worked at Mutato for seven years with Netflix. At first, they couldn’t even advertise on open TV, because Globo classified them as competitors. The big transformation I saw was the change in the way brands are built. Netflix built the brand only through digital. Mutato is part of this transformation, from building a brand through interaction. I see this change through the advertiser. Samsung is one of the biggest advertisers in the world. They renewed the image through content that reverberates on TikTok, Facebook, Intagran, Twitter, etc. We at Mutato position brands using content across platforms.
co-creation
I see this evolution that doesn’t just pass through influencers. A brand cannot outsource its content through influencers doing merchandising. I need to work in co-creation with advertisers on the brand’s platforms. Brands have to learn not to outsource content, but learn to dialogue directly with people. Today, you will take content that comes from outside and adapt it with a local varnish made possible by digital. When I started in advertising 20 years ago, you would take an ad from outside and translate it. Now, you have to give a local content.
engagement
Samsung launched a global campaign to promote the new Samsung Galaxy A in 2020. Our challenge was to make this campaign relevant to generation Z. Based on the insight that Brazil is the country where most music is heard in their own language, we understand that music would be a key element to speak to this audience. We partnered with music producer and influencer Pedro Sampaio to create the film’s soundtrack highlighting the product’s features to the sound of brega funk, the hit of the moment in Brazil, giving a whole new layer of local meanings to a global campaign. In parallel, we launched challenges with influencers on TikTok to engage the public. There were 44 million views on YouTube, 238% more than the previous campaign, making this the most viewed version of the Galaxy A video in the world. Engagement was higher than the previous campaign, with a 223% increase in comments on the video – and a record positive sentiment of 92% in mentions.
Interao
The client/agency relationship became more intense due to digital. Today, contact is almost daily. Before, you made a movie and put it on the air, giving the job almost finished. Then, I would look at surveys to measure the result. Today, interaction would say. And this also happens with the consumer. The campaign we created for Ambev, #PrideNoPara, is a significant example of this interaction. Ambev brought together brands to support the LGBTQIA+ movement, said no to an internet user who asked the company to launch a special logo in celebration of what he defined as Hetero Pride. Ambev, could you also create a logo for Pride Hetero?!, wrote the follower, after the company changed the photo on the page to the colors of the LGBTQIA+ movement, on Facebook. Hi R*****. We can’t, no. Abraos, replied the company. The response went viral on social media.
