Advertising starts seeing recovery after hitting a wall
Time tunnel, butterflies in the stomach, turning the table, acceleration, catastrophe, topsy-turvy, these are some expressions of the leaders of the largest advertising companies in Brazil to refer to their feelings in the period we are going through.
"We had the expectation of fast growth in January, suddenly we hit a wall," says Luiz Sanches, president of AlmapBBDO, who has not lost the optimism. "We will find the way, it is like leak in the wall. If you plug on one side, the water finds another point to get out."
One of the most awarded ad executives in the country, Mr. Sanches, 49, a fan of São Paulo football club Corinthians, compares the time of the pandemic with the harsh 87 minutes that Flamengo, the Rio de Janeiro club that is the current Brazilian champion, had at the final of Libertadores, the South American cup, last year. But he sees the ad world capable of a comeback, as did Gabriel Barbosa, who scored twice for Flamengo against Argentina's River Plate, at the 88 and 92 minutes.
It was a big blow, says Melissa Vogel, CEO of Kantar Ibope, who monitors ad numbers in Brazil. Ad agencies lost 25% of their revenue in the beginning of the pandemic, in April and May, but the recovery began in July and August.
This year's market behavior was completely different than in prior years, she explains. It usually would begin to take off in April, cool down in June and July and rise again in the following months, until the year's end.
This year the statistics were turned upside-down. "Rough seas," compares Ehr Ray, 54, CEO of BETC/Havas, responsible for campaigns for Peugeot, Pão de Açúcar, Hersheys, among others. Son of Chinese from Hong Kong of the movie industry, Mr. Ehr says he has already experienced several transformations in Brazil: "I began in the stone age," he exaggerates.
In the pandemic, he says, "everybody was forced to make changes, develop skills and projects that were planned for the next five or ten years in a few months." In normal times there could be doubt if something would work or not, he says. In the pandemic there was no such room.
His agency, which is in the network of France's Havas, already had a practice of international contacts via videoconferencing, which occurred twice a week. Now, all contacts, daily, are via videoconferencing. "We had to increase the connection capacity of all workers, even office chairs we cleared for them to take if they wanted," he says.
Many, Mr. Ehr says, live in apartments or small...
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