Actor and entrepreneur, Babu Santana tells PROPMARK how he started acting and what is his relationship with brands
Alexandre da Silva Santana, known as Babu Santana, has been an actor for 25 years. He began his career at the age of 16, in the Nós do Morro group, and since then he has added films such as Cidade de Deus, Cidade dos Homens and Tim Maia to his curriculum, in addition to many other works.
Despite this, it was only in 2020 that the image — and the name — of Babu Santana became known to the general public, with his participation in Big Brother Brasil 2020, the first edition of the program that mixed celebrities with anonymous.
In his career, Babu broke the show’s wall record and came in fourth. From there, managed by Mynd, the actor started to have his face stamped in several campaigns, such as Americanas, 99Foods, Gilette, Estomazil and adopted the figure of “big daddy”, attributed to him by the program’s audience.
Currently, Babu works on some fronts: he remains acting and recording his advertisements, but now he has a music label called Paizão Records and has become the director of the group Nós do Morro.
To PROPMARKBabu Santana tells how his career in acting began, his passage through BBB 20 and about his relationship with brands.
How did your career as an actor begin?
My story with acting starts with a wish very early on, when my aunt Sonia took me to the theater and I saw a man in a dog suit. I usually go so far in this story because it was there that I wanted to be an actor, when I was 6 or 7 years old, only the situation of my reality at the time seemed like a distant dream. Until one day I started doing theater at school, at 12, and at 16 I discovered Nós do Morro, and there I understood what it was like to be an artist. I stayed there for 16 years and got to know cinema, had contact with the job market. My story with acting starts there at the beginning of my life and I don’t think I could be happy doing anything else.
At that time, did you already have a relationship with brands and companies?
Not. This thing with brands and advertising companies is something totally new in my life, totally post-BBB. That was the main door that the program opened for me. Before that, I had only done a commercial that to this day I don’t know if I was edited or not. In 25 years of career, before the BBB, I had only made one advertising video. I also think that the issues of advertising standards weigh even more, right? As I never had this advertising profile, in the pre-BBB period, my experience with it was almost zero.
Did Big Brother Brasil 2020 change your life? Did you expect it to have such an impact?
It’s changed and it’s pretty crazy. I was like a little stall there that sold something interesting, but nobody saw me because I was there in the dark. The BBB opened a horizon for me and people started to see me as this individual who can sell. The BBB gave me credibility. I didn’t change my profile, I’m still the same person, but the credibility and this identification of people with me was very beautiful. Of course, many people like my work, like Tim Maia’s, but I was dressed as a character. The great differential of BBB was that people began to see me as a person and I gained credibility. I think the main transformation was that people started to believe in me, not just as an artist, but as a human being.
What were your plans for the post program? How did you imagine your participation would be?
Not even in my wildest dreams could I have predicted what happened to me. I was very innocent. My strategy was to stay for two weeks, even so I wouldn’t be the first to leave, and enjoy all the wave that the BBB promotes. I have a band and I thought a lot, even, about turning my career to music once the BBB gave me this notoriety, but when I got there, I started to confront myself with a series of things that I faced in life and I I said I wouldn’t lower my head. When I was confronted with the bitterness I had out here, I couldn’t let Brazil see everything that was happening and not respond accordingly. I focused on this issue because I realized that I was the oldest guy there, suddenly one of those who had a humbler origin and I wanted to demonstrate the issue of being a father, of being a black man, being an artist and enjoying that spotlight that was in above me to convey my thoughts to the world. Glad people embraced it. Of course, having a million and a half more in the account would be wonderful, but as an artist, thinker and communicator, I don’t think anyone could give me a bigger prize than what I got from participating in the show.
What was the first advertising campaign you did post-BBB?
I think it was Americanas. But I was – and still am – a Gilette ambassador, I campaigned for 99 Food, but I also worked for the competition, Estomazil… But, after the BBB, the Mynd people said that when they released my portfolio, almost all brands wanted to work with me. I would venture to say that I have worked with more than 30 brands. It was impressive. The credibility accredited me so that several brands wanted to associate their name with my image and that makes me very happy.
How did your relationship with Mynd begin? Are they the ones who receive the proposals from the brands and pass them on to you?
I’m Mynd’s agent today and I’m very happy with that because they have Preta Gil as a partner, who is a friend I already knew before BBB. She was the one who convinced me to become an influencer, if it weren’t for her I wouldn’t have done it. Everyone was very receptive to me and very patient. I discovered that Mynd has a team made up of black people, I can say that they are the majority there, this enchanted me and made me embrace the agency. We are going into our third year of partnership, very happy and with a lot of work.
What do you consider when closing a job with a brand or company?
Above all, the values of this company. I am very concerned that it is a company committed to issues such as anti-racism, with anti-homophobia, that it is a company that has a nice philosophy so that I can associate my image with it, because this is an issue that the public will charge me. As the team that works with me at Mynd is mostly made up of people of color, LGBTQIAP+ and everything else, I believe I have an eclectic look at all of this and I am confident that they will not associate me with brands that are outside these guidelines.
When you run a campaign, you participate in its production
Actively. Every now and then my house turns into a recording studio and that’s been cool, because I’ve been understanding the new languages and implementing the languages I learned from cinema, for example. So, sometimes, we do something different, try to do something well edited, you know? We try to make a difference.
As things were happening for me, I invested and today we have a studio to do campaigns. I realized a dream as an entrepreneur. I’m learning to undertake and capture a team. I didn’t have this habit of social networking, but as it became a business, I learned to take pleasure in managing the networks and, as I am in my forties and I don’t know how to handle everything, I have a team of young people to help me .
You work on several fronts. Sings, acts, campaigns, has your own music label… How do you divide your time between works?
I end up putting it all together. For example, when we have a narration thing, I do it in the Paizão Records studio, so if we’re making a song, I ask them to take a break so I can record. On the side of the audio studio, there’s a photography studio, where I already put together the cinema, the rehearsal part… So when I need to audition, I do it there. Today, I am the director of Nós do Morro, so I try to bring all this implementation that I have in my company to the institution. I gather everything in one thing, all my teams are interconnected.
Of all the jobs you’ve done, which one do you like the most?
I’m really enjoying working with Gilette. My son is turning 18 and is starting to have this shaving routine, so it’s nice to combine it with a marketing action, even for people to identify with the brand. I’m doing a movie and I couldn’t shave my beard, because of continuity, so I called the staff at Gilette and asked if I could shave my son’s beard in the campaign.
The one from 99Foods is also very cool, because they proposed something to me about being “the sensible one” and that’s cool, I think it’s an irony of fate. I’m really enjoying doing it.
Do you have a brand you would like to campaign for?
I go a lot into emotional memory. I even did it for Amstel, but I wanted to do it for other beer brands because they are the commercials that stick in my head the most, and there are some that I think are super chic, that even Gil do Vigor did, which are the advertising campaigns Bank. And there’s a brand that I’m a big fan and I still don’t have on my resume, which is Adidas.
How do you see yourself as a brand?
I’m still writing this, but I see myself with seriousness, resilience and confidence. I also see myself with a language of humor, in addition to being a guy with cinema experience and who is always committed to the image, sound and visual thing. I would invest in myself.
What is the best definition for the Babu Santana brand?
Big daddy, because I took it seriously. I had a friend, who was Mr. Catra who was the big daddy at the time, right? And I said that big daddy was just Catra. But, in my case, the big daddy is in the most beautiful sense of the word, welcoming. There is a whole historical context of male absence in the creation of generations, but I was lucky to have two men in my life, which were my grandfather and my father. My father was better than my grandfather, I will be better than my father and I hope my son is better than me.
What are your plans for the coming years?
I want to associate Nós do Morro with Babu Santana and that there we can promote this phenomenon that is the advertising market. I would like this market to see Nós do Morro as a powerful brand to promote brands. I really want to try to do what happened to me with Nós do Morro and I want Paizão Records to deliver what I planned for them. And, of course, keep acting because if I stop acting, I get sick. It’s what I love to do.
