What works better: Hollywood starlets or Brazilian beauties?

I wrote yesterday that foreign companies are trying to increase their Brazilianess. After some searching I found a good example of an initiative(pt) by Procter & Gamble.

What?
During the Women Week in March, P&G set up booths in so called document offices in São Paulo. These are special government offices that try to make it easier get a driving license or other documents.

Most of these documents require photos. P&G had a team present of hair dressers, stylists and professional photographers in the busiest offices. More than 3000 women used took opportunity and have better pictures on their passports!

Why? 
Other than being a nice stunt, there are of course financial considerations! Increasing wages and easier access to credit has created a whole new part of population with money. Money that can be spend on other things than just basic needs. For example on personal hygiene products, of which P&G has plenty.

An initiative like this is one step to the Brazilian hearts. Another step is making the communication fit better to the Brazilian culture. That means featuring Brazilian people in the advertising. People Brazilians are used to seeing.

P&G already saw that this approach works. When the company hired model Gisele Bündchen for its Pantene hair brand, sales tripled!

The same story can be heard at Unilever: "The design of campaigns continues to be global, but the execution is, increasingly, to be local" says vice president Luiz Carlos Dutra.


A new Rexona deodorant campaign (worth 12.5 million euro) will feature football player Robinho and actress Camila Pitanga.