The month was August, when it was cold in São Paulo. I arrived for lunch, as I still do today, five minutes early. Armando Ferrentini had arrived early. It was close. The Diário Popular was located in the Old Center of the city. At his side, our friend and godfather of a relationship that began at that time and would never end, Oswaldo Assef. On the piano, Moacyr Peixoto, who, in the nights of São Paulo, played with his brothers Araken and Cauby at the Claridge nightclub at the Claridge Hotel, at the beginning of Avenida 9 de Julho.
The introductions made, the order made – I ate an unforgettable steak poivre – Armando goes straight to the point. He invites me to write regularly for the Asterisco supplement, which was published on weekends by Diário Popular. Armando was the newspaper’s commercial director and his brother, Nello, the editor. “Madia, said Armando, Brazil needs real marketing…”. Asterisk, over the years, evolved into Caderno Propaganda & Marketing, and today it is the renowned publication PROPMARK, part of Editora Referência, alongside Propaganda magazine and Marketing magazine. Publications where the history of advertising and marketing in Brazil was built. And so it will continue for at least another 50 years.
We talked a lot and I ended up agreeing. And Armando proposed sending a reporter to interview me for an introductory story the following Sunday, and the first column the next Sunday. Months earlier he had been hired by dr. Olavo Setubal to set up the first marketing department of a bank in Brazil; that of, at the time, Itaú America. The interview was published on Sunday, and even before the publication of my first article, when I arrive on Monday to work at Itaú, there is a message on my desk to talk to dr. Olav. I go into his office, asks me to sit down, and hands me the newspaper with my interview marked in red ink, with exclamations, interrogations, and much more. One of the directors of Itaú saw the article and was indignant…
Dr. Olavo looks at me and asks: “Madia, did you say all that is here and make all these criticisms of banks and other institutions in the financial market?” “Yes, dr. Olavo, that’s what I think, and that’s how I intend to work as the main person responsible for the bank’s marketing, and for building Itaú’s image. That’s what you told me and asked. That your dream is to be the main bank in Brazil. And this is the way. I’m like that and I don’t know how to do differently”. He looked at me, smiled, which wasn’t exactly his style, and said, “I hired the right person.”
And so 50 years passed. 50 years where every weekend I have the opportunity to enter the home, mind and heart of thousands of entrepreneurs and professionals. In carrying out the mission that Armando has entrusted to me and I have sought to fulfill to the letter: collect, organize, analyze, extract lessons and lessons from the best and most current happenings in the management of companies around the world, in modern administration and in its ideology , marketing, as Peter Ferdinand Drucker taught us.
Today, due to the force of circumstances, the appreciation, affection and respect of Armando, the support of all the editors who have gone through this PROPMARK, I am proud and happy to subscribe to the longest running marketing column in the world.
This one, which you, every week, honor us with your reading, as you have just done. Thank you very much.
Francisco Alberto Madia de Souza is a marketing consultant ([email protected])
