Financial alone won’t attract me
Brazilian advertising is experiencing an unprecedented cycle of renewal. In the past, acquisition processes involving agencies based in Brazil and international groups dragged on for almost 30 years, an average that fell by half between 1990 and 2000. Today, the interval has plummeted, accelerating the pace of change.
The movement highlights the effusive presence of independent agencies, the trigger for million-dollar deals in the Brazilian advertising industry. “We are experiencing a faster cycle of renewal, given the emergence and acquisition of new agencies. This may be a reflection of the heating up of the advertising market and the current dynamism of the sector”, comments Graziela Di Giorgi, who after 17 years as the leader of Scopen in Latin America founded the consultancy Human/Rise, dedicated to improving the relationship between agencies and advertisers based on a proprietary method of structured work for marketing and people operations.
Looking back, the cyclical leap is clear. From the mid-1990s onwards, Brazilian advertising was dominated by multinational agencies. “It’s interesting to look back. In the 1980s, Brazil only had national agencies. But the arrival of multinationals was so strong that in the following decade the ranking of the ten largest was taken over by international groups,” recalls Antonio Fadiga, CEO of Artplan, part of the Dreamers group.
It became difficult to resist the onslaught of foreigners and the profusion of acquisitions clouded the market until 2015. Despite the aggressive financial targets, negotiations in the past had customers as the bargaining chip. Today, this is no longer the case. The tide is influenced by other factors.
Fadiga invites us to reflect. “Just look to see if a multinational agency has more significant national clients than the accounts aligned globally,” he notes. The executive believes that independent agencies will increase in Brazil, attracted by entrepreneurs inspired by the success of successful ventures, and shrewd enough to notice the number of clients not linked to international groups.
It becomes easier to jump on the bandwagon and set up an agency. “Why not? I think there will be more movement soon,” he adds. But that doesn’t mean that multinationals will shrink in size. “What will happen is that, quantitatively, we will have more independents, and multinationals will lose some local clients,” he predicts. Fadiga admits that he has met executives with American, French and English accents, but “finance alone won’t attract me,” he warns.
Read the full report in the printed edition of September 2.
