São Paulo, Brasil. Márcio Bittencourt, Creative Director at Cheil Brazil
How has global advertising changed in the last decade?
Advertising is always changing, faster and faster. A lot has happened in the last decade, but I believe the social media explosion made the biggest impact. Some social networks have grown exponentially, while new ones keep popping up nonstop. And in recent years they have improved as sales and brand positioning channels, whether through influencers or new media formats, which has made a big difference. And more recently we began to experience the explosion of games as a media channel, also driven by the fact that games are increasingly similar to social networks.
Has Brazilian creativity changed dramatically in he last years?
Advertising is increasingly global. And proof of this is the large number of succesful Brazilian creatives working in other countries. We’ve always had creative excellence and that hasn’t changed. But advertising has changed a lot and I believe that Brazilian creativity has been following all the technological innovations of the last few years and becoming more global and less local. Some say that in the process a little of our cultural identity was lost, which is true. But I believe that once creative exchange became global, this process was inevitable.
Today, who creates more trends: social media or advertising?
I believe social media creates trends and advertising appropriates and boosts them. Today as creatives we need to be very watchful to what happens on social networks, after all, it’s literally the people’s voice. We can listen to what they are saying, praising, criticizing, thinking. And then as brands we can join these conversations and get closer to our audience like never before.
What lessons did the Anti-bullying Skin case for Samsung leave you?
It was the first big project I did within a game. And right away on Fortnite, the biggest game in the world. It made me learn a lot about the gaming community and how to communicate with them. They are different from other communities. Of course, no one likes advertising that interrupts, but with gamers that really can’t happen. You can’t interrupt the gameplay. And more than that, you need to improve the gaming experience, bring something new, different. The role of influencers in this universe is also different, they are very close to the community, almost like friends. It’s necessary to know how to use this intimacy in the right way. And we were also able to see the strength that the right cause has within the community. We found a real issue that impacted the entire community and were able to address it in a way that was accepted by the gamers.
Samsung is the advertiser of the year in WINA 2021… advertiser or agency merit?
Both! Great ideas without the trust and partnership of the client are nothing. We can only be thankful that in those cases everything went together perfectly and we had this amazing result at WINA 2021.
What has been Cheil’s directive to make Samsung so close to its consumers?
Samsung’s global concept is “Do what you can’t”. This is totally directed to consumers, it’s the brand’s desire to make everyone able to do what they didn’t think it would be possible. We, as an agency, always try to bring ideas that reinforce this position, not just to sell products, but to empower people to be the best version of themselves.
How do you manage to make that innovation/technology combination creatively successful?
Technology is increasingly connected to people’s lives. Therefore, it’s also increasingly connected to advertising. New technologies appear all the time and can be used as tools for advertising. In some cases, they can even be created by advertising. Who would have thought a few years ago that we could use a game skin to communicate a message about bullying? I think this is great for the creative, because new tools are always coming up to help put our ideas into practice. The important thing is to keep upadted and see where each one fits best. In the end, the most important thing will always be the idea.