How Brazil's Globo TV Uses Its Massive Reach to Snag Partnerships With Brands Like Unilever and Vivo

RIO DE JANEIRO - After hosting the 2014 World Cup, which ended in an excruciating loss for the national team, most soccer-obsessed Brazilians will find themselves in front of their TVs once again to watch next year’s matches from Russia. This week Globo TV, the Brazilian rights-holder for the World Cup, and several other 2018 national and international tournaments, announced it has lined up six new advertisers, including Banco Itaú, Chevrolet, Unilever and telecoms giant Vivo with more than $130 million in advertising commitments. The building blocks of the three-week upfront selling season began during another international sports event: last summer’s Rio Olympic Games. Globo, the dominant network in this country of 207 million, was the TV rights-holder for the hometown games. “The Olympics allowed an integrated approach of how you create communication tools for our sponsors and our partners,” said Raphael Corrêa, Globo’s executive director of international business, during a lunch last week on the campus of Globo Studios, a 129-acre complex set into the picturesque Atlantic Forest on the edge of Rio. Globo’s dominance of the Brazilian market--it reaches nearly 100 million viewers during the broadcast day--extends to the brands who buy time on the 52-year-old network. “In Brazil we are very comfortable for the clients because they can buy spots, or projects like soccer,” said advertising sales chief Marcelo Duarte, who oversees a team of 1,000, including 400 sales staff in offices throughout Brazil, as well as the U.S., Europe, Asia and Africa. “If you go to the U.S., it’s a daily fight to get the right spot or the right opportunity.” “If you want to talk to the whole country in a week it’s easier and cheaper in Brazil than in the United States," added Eduardo Becker, digital media ad sales director. “We've always understood the commercial break as part of the experience,” added Corrêa. “It’s not [taken for] granted. We fight for that.” Globo’s fight goes beyond the fast-moving technology changes that have upended the media and advertising industries around the world. Brazil is in a recession, the unemployment rate is 13 percent, corruption is rampant and political scandals have plagued the country for years. Globo Comunicação e Participações, the holding company that includes Globo TV, reported that a weaker advertising market led to a decrease of $345 million reais ($109 million) in ad revenue in the most recent quarter. But Duarte is confident about the year ahead. [kickout id="1"] “We’re still producing, we’re still doing new programs and we’re going to put on sale a lot of new opportunities and we believe that the country is going to get on track in ‘18,” he said. ”We believe in that.” “The more I receive from the market, [the] more money I have to go ahead and invest in new studios, new hiring, new programs, new rights,” added Globo CEO Carlos Schroder. Globo doesn't partake in the splashy, celebrity-infused upfront spectacles U.S. networks produce each May. Instead, throughout the year, they invite clients to their huge, Hollywood-like studio with 10 sound stages, a post-production facility, special effects lab, costume shop (with 300,000 outfits spanning the decades) and a backlot where thousands of actors, writers, directors, makeup and costume artists produce 3,000 hours of programming every year. "We have both Madison Avenue and L.A.," said Corrêa. "We bring customers here so we can do it tailor made." "They're learning about how we can work together on product placement or build a story around the product," said Becker. Economic conditions and technological advancements have also meant Brazilians are cutting the cord, though at a slightly slower pace than in the U.S. Cable subscriptions dropped 1.4 percent in May, to 18.6 million leaving 28 percent of Brazil’s 66 million TV homes hooked on cable. Duarte calls the cord-cutting, for now, “irrelevant,” mostly because of the dominance of the over-the-air network and its very loyal audience. “We know Brazil. From the whole country, to the small towns. It’s very effective for our advertisers,” he said. This story is one in a series of reports on the global impact of Brazilian media and marketing, and the legacy of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

Programming & Performance

How Brazil's Globo TV Uses Its Massive Reach to Snag Partnerships With Brands Like Unilever and Vivo

The network has nearly 100 million viewers a day

Chris Ariens

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Chris Ariens