artigo publicado na edição de setembro pela revista shots* repercutiu mal entre os criativos portugueses.
a tal virosidade desperta, de algum tempo estava incubada nas conversas de chacha destiladas entre copos e jantaradas onde a xenofobia aqui e acolá ia sendo destilada entre sorrisos de dentes noite a fora para amanhecer com mau hálito na calçada de agências por onde brasileiros não são permitidos nem porta a fora.
em fim dos anos oitenta a revista briefing de acordo com suas orientações e limitações da imprensa especializada que nunca pode dizer a verdade a cem por cento para não ser defenestrada por aquelas agências anunciantes que veiculam páginas dando lustro a sí próprias — razão pela qual a secção criatividade foi defenestrada desavergonhosamente, o que pode soar ainda mais honesto do que entrelinhas de certas matérias nariz de cera - ensaiou páginas sobre a contribuição dos brasileiros a propaganda portuguesa, sendo replicada pelo xenófobo oficial de plantão, o pedro bidarra, que sacou de argumentos travestidos em historiografia da produção lusa e de nomes contributos, como se realmente ela não começasse a balancar os tomates a partir da virada da Y&R dos anos noventa. aliás, basta rever o que era a Y&R, liderada pelo cazarin, e a liderada pela vera" torpe" da costa e a "enterrada" pelo albano.
a grande questão, julgo, não é a participação qualitativa ou quantitativa de mais ou menos brasileiros, contribuindo para a propaganda portuguesa balançar pouco mais os penduricalhos, que cérebros lusos há, sem dúvida, e muito bons, bendita menção ao joão ribeiro com quem estive a trabalhar. assim também como enganos mis, tais como classificar e premiar qualitativas campanhas, como por exemplo da optimus, cujo maior orgulho era não ter brasileiros em sua equipa de cabecinhas pensadoras, já que idéia que é bom “ necas de pitibiriba “ ou alguém acha que aquilo é mesmo o supra sumo da inteligentzia da propaganda portuguesa?
a grande questão para mim, e que sempre intrigou-me é: os brasileiros que estão em portugal fazem propaganda ou publicidade, como queiram, portuguesa ou recriam simplesmente patterns brasileiros mais ou menos aclimatados a cadeia da linguagem falada em portugal?
quanto a mim, digo sem medo de errar, após dezenas, centenas de contatos do tipo “ barriga no balcão” com o povo portugues, aquele que não está no bairro alto nem na foz, nem nos briefings, pesquisas e pré-testes, nem na absurda empolação de “ executivos de marketing “ com raras excepções todos com a fralda mijada e cheia de bosta, tal qual suas cabeças, que em portugal não se faz propaganda portuguesa ainda.
e se não o fazem brasileiros por lá já aculturados, não o fazem portugueses muito menos. fazem propaganda para sí próprios publicitários. criativizando o enorme complexo de subdesenvolvimento comum a brasileiros e portugueses que sonham em ser reconhecidos no palácio( palais du festival, oui) e estão se lixando para os consumidores reais aqueles que, sendo humanos, e não apenas conceitos vislumbrados sem cheiro e sabor, tem vísceras e cerebros que estão a salvo dos patterns adoptados pela comunicação de marketing de marcas em sua maioria feita até hoje em portugal.
e neste sentido, há que se dar o mérito ao edson athayde, que embora não tenha terminado o que começou – e que dificilmente o fará na ogilvy – foi quem mais intentou uma linguagem mais afinada com a essência da alma portuguesa, pelo menos numa certa fase, e para certo target correspondente as marcas que tinha em carteira.
de resto, a propaganda portuguesa não conseguiu evoluir e sintonizar-se com o pensamento das vozinhas das lixívias, seus maridos, filhos e netos, para além dos estereótipos. compram o produto porque todo país tem mesmo muita roupa suja pra lavar; o que não quer dizer que a propaganda tenha dialogado, seduzido, influenciado seu comportamento.
aliás, este parece ser o busílis da questão, nem tão sofisticados como gostariam de ser – o sofisticadamente simples nunca foi realmente praticado, apenas empalado – nem tão populares, como o deveriam. os publicitários que atuam em portugal, seja brasileiros e ou portugueses, são vítimas do que fazem aos outros julgando-se incólumes a sí próprios.
este talvez seja o grande terreno por desbravar misto de lama e diamantes destinado aos nomes que virão. isto se, passado algum tempo como estagiários ou mão de obra semi-escrava, não venham a ser substituidos por iguais ou por mais do mesmos que estão aí.
*Portugal, flying or flagging?
Portugal is very far from being top of the commercialization pops. The country has a population of a little over 11 million. GDP growth hovers at the one per cent per year mark. Income comes from services and things like wine and tourism, and the country has notched up the biggest debt in the EU. There are only three million or so TVs - making its audience closer to Latvia than its neighbor, Spain. Advertising clutter - on streets still ploughed by hand operated old trams - is most notable for its absence. Even geographically, its way out on the wings of Europe. Hmm. Not quite the stuff that sends marketing men's pulses racing. Small wonder then, that the words 'portuguese' and 'creative' don't set the advertising fraternity's adrenal glands working double time.
"There's no money in this country," sighs Gideon Neil, director at production company Tangerina Azul. "Look around you on the street. Everywhere it's a bank, a phone company, a church." Ghosts may win at Cannes, but Jesus just doesn't advertise like he used to.
How about talent? Okay then. Name a famous Portuguese creative. No? A photographer? Artist? The best, like Paula Rego, are all exiles, argues one of the solitary aces in Portugal's pack, José Cabaçoo, who himself left Portugal two years ago to work on Nike at Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam and now runs Nike Latin America from W+K Portland. Cabaço's as international a figure as you're likely to find. And, damn it, he's originally from Mozambique. "It´s difficult for this kind of country to become a regional creative exporter," he says. "Industry is weak, and is set to become weaker as the EU opens up to eastern Europe. By joining the EU it destroyed the agricultural-based economy here, its textiles industry is now threatened with the output from eastern Europe, China, India. And so, the local advertising business has less and less real needs. It is a market based on adaptations."
A silver lining to this 'cloud' is made in Brazil. The first Lion won for Portugal had a Brazilian copywriter, Edson Athayde. "And keep looking at the awards for Portugal down the years," says Athayde's then art director Cabaço, "there's always a Brazilian in the team." People cite dramatic figures: 60 per cent of Lintas Lisbon's creative department was Brazilian in 1998, 90 per cent of FCB's in 1999 and 2000.
It was the late-80s when the first Brazilian creatives hit Portuguese shores. Portugal had thrown off its Salazar dictatorship in only 1974, but Brazil already had decades of advertising lessons from the Americans, and was a hyper-competitive creative market even then. "When I went to study, there were 75 people applying for one place," says Leandro Alvarez who left Brazil for Portugal in 1994 where he is now TBWA\Lisbon's creative director. "It was more competitive than medicine. Washington Olivetto was on TV, clearly clever, clearly rich, clearly an ad guy, and my generation wanted to be like him."
The output of those first creative immigrants likewise spawned a new generation of portuguese locals prepared to take advertising seriously as a profession. Lisbon-born Pedro Magalhaes, now the 36-year-old creative director of JWT Lisboa, was a 21-year-old university student and became one of those inspired to look to the industry for a career. "It really was something of a revolution in Portugal. All advertising changed within the space of three years. A lot of lawyers and actors suddenly changed career."
But why would Brazilian agency staff - glamour for soccer-star salaries and zipping round in helicopters - downsize to this little slice Europe? The pioneers, says Leandro, came first from curiosity, and only later as a calculated career move. "We came over for adventure, not to work in advertising. It was a way of living in Europe and not washing dishes. Then we worked out that you could come over aged 23, work with better directors from England and France and so on, win some awards and go back commanding three times the salary."
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Brazilian Alexandre Okada has just left Portugal after three years as executive creative director of Leo Burnett Lisbon, where his creative department was a clean 50-50 split between local and Brazilian, to become the network's Miami-based Latin America creative director. He says Brazilians migrate to escape the 12-hour days, to switch to a less hectic standard of living. Shopping for talent back home made sense for him, too: "Brazilians begin work at 17 or 18 so when you hire a 26-year-old he has almost a decade in advertising already, and because of the exchange rate, for a little more money you can afford him. If you hire a Portuguese of the same age he'll have just left school, will have no experience but will demand almost twice the salary."
The Brazilians cannot help but transfer both their depths of creative knowledge, as well as the sheer volume of output. "It's about speed," Okada says. "Ten years ago, inflation was 100 per cent month in Brazil. It was impossible to plan, so we began to work to really short deadlines, and we worked out that to get quality you needed quantity. So in two days we'd come up with 70 films, present all of them, pick three, produce a whole campaign in a week. The Portuguese are used to the European deadlines. When you mix the two cultures the behavior totally changes.
They work faster and they work more carefully to the craft." Brazilians bring their expansiveness to the party, too, argues Cabaço: "The relationship is a little like Britain's with the USA both economically and linguistically. Brazilians and Americans have this looser way of peaking, they are more flexible, less conservative culturally. Brazil is an open country. There´s much more experimentation in every sense. Portugal, is more by the book." But there are linguistic obstacles: the Portuguese spoken in Brasil and that spoken in Portugal are poles apart - when the first soaps from Brazil flooded the Portuguese TV market it was "the equivalent of Scottish soap going out in the USA? says Cabaço.
Nor have the Portuguese always greeted the advertising equivalent of foreign exchange students with open arms. "When I arrived in 2001:' says Okada, "there was a real climate of creative patriotism 'We understand Portuguese consumers, we don't need anyone', was the thinking. It's true: I don't know the people here, but it's not true I can't create for them - they are human beings. When I hired the first Brazilians they quizzed me.
They are more expensive; they don't know the country; don't know Portuguese people. But it's not about Brazil and Portugal, it's about mixing cultures and talent." TBWA creatives Gezo Marques and João Ribeiro are good examples of the Brazil-Portuguese creative hybrid in practice. The easygoing Marques, who was born outside São Paolo, answered a newspaper ad for an art director that Leandro Alvarez, then head of Lintas, put in a Brazilian paper in 1998, and has been a team with the slightly more highly strung, paranoiac Lisbon born copywriter Ribeiro, ever since. "I came from curiosity," he says. "I didn't know anything about the place. I saw the ad. I locked my house. Sold my things and bought a ticket."
"Brazilian advertising is three steps ahead of us. Most of what I have learned about advertising I've learned from Brazilians,? says Ribeiro. But he thinks maybe he tables are turning, and Portugal could export its talent after all. "We forget here: I'm as good as everyone else. After three coffees I'm better than them. I think I could work in Brazil now as easily as he could here:'
"Yes," says Okada. "It's quite possible for people to move in the other direction. There are no limits, the young generation is really quite good and has high standards. But still, a young Portuguese guy face to face with a young Brazilian guy? The young Brazilian guys are so prepared, just so prepared, to face these guys You have to accept you will start at a low level and work hard to rise. São Paolo is 50m people. Portugal has 11m. One city is bigger than the whole population. There's no comparison:' "Portugal," says Cabaço, "has a beautiful thing that is an obstacle to talent, and this is where I'm not Portuguese. They are absurdly connected to their climate, their family, the food, the beach,the wine . There's an army of talent in Portugal that could do what I'm doing but they don't want to. They love their country. They are wedded to that. Why disconnect? To do what?"
One area in which Portugal has Brazil beaten hands-down is production. Where Brazilian advertising borrows its craft from soap operas, Portugal steals its standards from features, argues Okada. Ricardo Cansado, the head of television at BBDO Lisbon, says that it's witchcraft, what the portuguese producers manage to magic onto the screen. "We make miracles on these budgets and on these time scales. I talk to England, France and the US and they ask how we create this kind of work. Well frankly, it's a kind of theft.
There's been an explosion in directing talent in the market, according to TBWA's Alvarez: "The big push for production companies is invested in making films look good, and we have some extraordinary DPs just now:
And with the boom in the craft of commercials follows expertise and equipment. Nicky Page of Page International Services recommends the spick-and-span, fully state-of-the-art gadgetry at
Nova Imagem. "Maybe it's good for you to see that we're not third world," he hazards.
Quite so: Tãnia Nunes runs the swish Nova Imagem facility, a sprawling place built from the earnings of her father's 25 years as an advertising director ("this cost 60 hours of commercials to make - we had no government support: (she says proudly). It ticks all the boxes, Avid, Flame, Smoke - "not that I'd try to talk a director out of using their usual editor" - a flash Mylo and Cyclops mo-co studio, and although they don't have an exhaustive inventory of equipment, the company's close relationship with Arri means they can get most stuff in 24 hours. "The good thing: she says, "about portuguese people is that if we don't know about something, we'll give it a go. If we don't have it, we'll create something. We don't stop - problem solving is in our blood. I'm the owner of the company but I’ll go and direct the casting if needs be."
Page's production service company, which has operated in the country for over three decades, now works with the likes of Joseph Kahn, Gerard de Thame, Ringan Ledwidge, Ivan Zacharias and Howard Greenhalgh. Pricewise, he says, they are competitive, but not mind-blowingly so: a Romanian chippie still costs 20 euros a day against Portugal's 100 (and for crowd scenes, please continue to point your browser at Easy Jet Praha), but Palma and Spain better watch their backs. One of Page's strengths, besides the great locations (30 minutes from city to beach in Lisbon and Oporto) is the company's long history of street casting: meaning clients, while page insists they still pay fair, can duck casting agency commissions. Because the film industry is still pretty young there's no union, or fixed rates, and no buy-out at all for the first year of broadest.
Where page operates from the crumbly atmospheric Castelo area, Tangerina Azul's five year-old Prodution service division is run by Margarida AdÃ∏nis from a wing of the company's large production outfit in the wealthy suburbs. She says Barcelona is burned out as a film location (some thing a Barcelona company privately confirms, saying even some standard shoot permits are increasingly difficult to come by), and Argentina, perceived as cheap because of the exchange rates, is less economic than it might be. "He e, if you're shelling out $10,000 on a location for commercial you'd better be shooting an 18th century national monumentâ€? she says. "We don't burn our locations so fast here." And with the euro's continued strength, it might not be so long till Portugal becomes a creative exporter of sorts - if not in agency staff, at least in production. Tangerina Azul is even about to open its first foreign bureau. In Brazil.
também publicado no www.truca.pt
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