A simple approach to video recording

Don't you just love it when you se a killer product idea that completely changes the game in a given category.  Well it happened last week when I bought a Flip Video Camera.  Ok.... I know.... I was late to the game.  I admit it.  Flip has taken video recording and made it into a very simple, cool, experience.  A little bit like what iPhone has done to mobile phones.  Just a few simple buttons and you're ready to tell your story on YouTube.  A lesson in simplicity that all marketers can learn from.

Click here to read about the buzz that's being generated by Flip...

'Stuck in the middle'... somewhere between Miami and Sao Paulo

It has been a long time since I posted something on my blog. I was out of the country for the past two weeks. So, now I'm back to one of my favorite evening activities... sitting in front of my MacBook recalling a few things that made my day or week special.

So here goes today's little story...

I have always struggled to find out what demographic group I belong to. So much has been written and said about the millenials and the Boomers.  But what happens when you're in the middle not belonging to any of these groups.  Last night, flying out of Miami International I read a great article by Jonathan Pontell in USAToday entitled "Stuck In The Middle". The article talks about the 'Generation Jones' -  the cohort born between 1954 and 1965, which includes President Obama (reason why we're probably going to hear more about this demographic).If you were also born in the 60's, it's worth reading.  I particularly enjoyed when the author speaks about the space between ".....Dylan going electric and Nirvana going unplugged."  Brilliant.  If you feel you're also kind of stuck in the middle, click here to read the full article.

Start with substance

Marketers all over America are finding ways to leverage Obama's presidential inauguration next week. A media event that is being compared to the Super Bowl. I was very happy to read that the Marketing Team at Quaker Oats in the U.S. is promoting its "Start with Substance" campaign with the mission of donating a bowl of oatmeal to 1 million poor families across the country.

A beautiful initiative in an historic moment of hope.  Click here to learn more.

A visit to Brazil's very first 'green' supermarket

I finally went to visit Brazil's first 'green supermarket': the Pão de Açúcar located in Indaiatuba, about an 70-min drive from São Paulo. It's been something I've been wanting to do since they opened last July.  

You start noticing a few differences in the parking lot even before you walk into the store. There are reserved parking spaces for cars running on ethanol. Next to the colorful recycling bins (becoming so common in markets all around the country), there's a specific bin for batteries and electronic waste.  

At the entrance, a large sign with the amount this particular store has recycled and the amount of energy saved. 

 

Inside, as I expected, more emphasis on organic, locally-produced products and an exclusive line of bags and household items made from recycled material. Shopping carts made from recycled PET bottles (the same material we are also using in the production of snack displays). You can also feel more natural lighting.  A few signs in different locations explain that some details are not visible to the everyday shopper, that the building has many architectural features designed using recycled material and it was built adopting many energy-reducing practices. There's a simple idea that I liked a lot. A bin placed right after the check-out where shoppers can discart secondary packaging, like for example, the carton box used for toothpaste.

New Pepsi campaign

New year, new communication for Pepsi in the U.S. market launching its new brand look and the 'Refresh Everything' campaign...

Waiting for our new digital SLR camera

My wife and I have been wanting to get a digital SLR camera for quite a while. Speaking to a local photographer, he recommended I buy online at B&H. When we lived in New York, B&H was the best store for photo, video an audio. I wasn't sure if buying online from a U.S.-based store would work but I decided to give it a try. Next step was to choose a camera for us. The B&H website does a good job describing each camera's features with useful links to reviews and product demos. We settled for the Canon EOS 50D with the 18-200mm lens kit.

The experience so far has been very good. To cater to customers in Brazil, B&H has set up a website in Portuguese and when I called the customer service to track the order, the person who answered was bilingual. The package is scheduled to arrive next week.

I decided that in 2009 I want to reconnect to a few things I used to enjoy more in the past. Photography, being one of them. So at least I'm starting off the year with an exciting new camera.

Click below to see some of the capabilities of the Canon EOS 50D on a demo I found on YouTube by professional wildlife photographer Brutus Östling.

Positive message for 2009

Here at PepsiCo Brazil, we are launching our first-ever institutional campaign under the theme PepsiCo - Creating a Tomorrow Better Than Today. It starts off next week as a print campaign in Brazil's top weekly magazines Veja, IstoÉ and Época.

The first page says 'The end of year is great to gather your Family and think about the future'.

You then turn the page and the message is 'Nice to meet you, we are the PepsiCo Family'. In Brazil, PepsiCo as a company has very little awareness. Historically we have communicated our brands but have never taken the time to tell people who we are and what we believe in. Many Brazilians will certainly be surprised to see that Pepsi®, Doritos®, Quaker®, Gatorade®, Toddy®, H2OH!®, Stax® and Coqueiro® Tuna & Sardines are all products that belong to the PepsiCo Family.

And these well-known brands to Brazilians all over the country are now unified by a common message that we are committed to creating a Tomorrow Better Than Today.

The copy says 'If it depends on us, 2009 will be a wonderful year'.

A Christmas gift to inspire me in 2009

This Christmas, my wife gave me the recently-published book Isay Weinfeld, written by Raul Barreneche, a compilation of the work of one of Brazil's most successful architects. I absolutely love architecture and in the years we lived in Connecticut, we fell in love with New England colonial homes. We lived in a dutch colonial that was built from an old barn with reclaimed wide plank flooring, old beams and a huge stone fireplace in the kitchen. We lived next to an adorable antique shop called The Red Petticoat, a place that was our initiation in early American antiques.

Now that we live in busy São Paulo, I'm getting into a more urban mode and my interest has shifted to contemporary architecture. I'm enjoying the aesthics of straight lines, the lofty feel of open spaces, and the generous use of glass that serves as an invitation to bring the outdoors in. Since we moved here, I have been attracted to Isay Weinfeld's work which can be seen in our favorite bookstore here called Livraria da Vila and in a charming local restaurant called Forneria San Paolo. The book focuses on the Architect's residential work. I was particularly happy to see that, although the houses he designs tend to be large, the book shows a specific project called Casa Cinza__ a smaller house but with the same dramatic sense of space and beautiful natural light found in his larger projects. Good news since we could never afford a large lot in the neighborhood we want.

If the perfect holiday gift is supposed to generate inspiration for the new year that is about to begin, I think my wife couldn't have chosed a more appropriate present.

Here are a few photos of Weinfeld houses featured in the book...

Have you heard of Januária?

By now, you probably know that I like cachaças and caipirinhas. A spirit that is linked in so many ways to Brazil's cultural identity and our historical connection to sugarcane. Many afficionados will say that the best cachaças are distilled in the State of Minas Gerais and the most famous brands come from a place called Salinas. However, a new town is on my cachaça watch list.  It's called Januária.

A few days ago, Alexandre Chiavegatti a friend who also loves to scout for unknown and hard-to-find brands, gave me a bottle of "Velha de Januária" (which I had never heard of). Yesterday in Brasília, I walked into a liquor store and found another brand from the same location called "Caribé". So I bought two bottles, one for Alexandre and one for my pantry. I just love collecting these little obscure brands which are pretty much distilled in the same way that was done in 17th century colonial Brazil and then aged in casks made from wood with romantic names like amburana or jequitibá rosa. It feels like, every bottle I buy, in a way is a celebration of a little piece of small town Brazil. A Brazil of open fields, dusty roads and simple people who know how to live in a slower pace.

For those curious, Januária is a little town (pop. 65,000) hidden in the northern part of Minas Gerais, 613 km from the state capital Belo Horizonte. This is what Wikipedia says about the place...

"The first explorers arrived in 1553 looking for gold. They were led by Castelhano Francisco Bruza de Espinosa and Padre João de Apicuelta Navarro. The first settlement was called Brejo do Salgado, due to the salinity of the streams and the marshes. The first sugarcane mill was set up and soon a chapel followed dedicated to Nossa Senhora do Amparo. In 1833 Brejo do Salgado became a "vila", or town and the seat was transferred to the left bank of the São Francisco River, the name being changed to Januária, in homage to Princess Januária, daughter of the Emperor Pedro I."

Mobile phones to speed up boarding process

Yesterday, I took a flight from São Paulo to Brasília and I was envious to see a few passengers using a relatively new service that allows them to use their mobile phones which are scanned at the gate for a boarding pass.  Great concept.

Change The Present this holiday season

I decided that this holiday season, I will give in a different way.  If you're feeling you can also change the way you give, click on the 'Changing The Present' banner on the side of this blog and find amazing ways in which you can do good.

Celebrating 55 Years of Quaker in Brazil

This year, Quaker® is celebrating 55 years since the brand started its Brazilian operation in Porto Alegre. Erika Salgado and Sarah Buchwitz leading Brazil's Quaker Brand Team - two of our young marketing talents - are having an awesome year. The business is growing double digit mainly driven by a strong professional marketing effort communicating the heart health benefits of oats and by a beautifully-produced TV campaign, called "Quaker The Grain of Goodness" (covered a few months ago on this blog), which is driving record sales.

To celebrate Quaker's rich heritage in this country, we're launching comemorative cans with the a vintage look on the backpanel....

The Quaker Team also produced a short video telling the brand's story which has been used to educate employees and customers on the beauty of the Quaker heritage.  The brand story is also being told through recipes. The team has compiled 55 recipes made with oats and how this special grain has influenced food culture from the 50's to today. 

Getting teens to send a message to the World

This month, we're also rolling out an ambitious project for our Ruffles® Brand - Brazil's best-selling potato chip. It's called the Ruffles "Fala Aê! Tour" (translates as 'speak up'), a bus with two studios onboard that will be touring the country inviting teens to send a 15" message to the world. The bus will be uploading these teen videos to a YouTube channel and the Ruffles website. Ambitious because our intention is to create the world's largest teen manfistation to be broadcast online.

Our brand activation agency, the Future Group, has done a great job creating a fun studio experience. Through a touchscreen monitor, teens can choose among different virtual backgrounds and also select props (like hats, sunglasses...) to get into the spirit before recording.

This summer activation is part of the brand's communication platform "Make noise, eat ruffles". For the Ruffles, 'noise' has both a product and an emotional association. Noise linked to the chip's hard bite and noise that comes from teens making their voices heard.

Toddy summer activation with a touch of 'pimp my ride'

A while back on this blog we talked about one of the brands we have in our portfolio in Brazil called Toddy® - Brazil's iconic chocolate milk powder. The brand has been tremendously successful over the past years with a campaign that uses irreverent cows sparking a strong connection with Brazilian millenials. Because the consumption of chocolate milk is predominantly in the breakfast occasion, we decided we needed some creative thinking to take the brand beyond the kitchen table.

How could we expand the brand experience to cool places where our teen target hangs out in a way that was relevant and engaging?

The answer has been the Toddy Shake Tour, a mobile unit we have been testing throughout the year where consumers can experience the product in a variety of amazing shakes. For the upcoming Brazilian summer season, which pretty much starts after Christmas, we're coming out with the Toddy Shake Van. Imagine a 'pimp-my-ride'-style '71 VW Van completely decked out with cool wheels, flat-screen TVs and a hydraulic ceiling that creates a mini diner with the best chocolates shakes in town. Consumers can choose chocolate shakes with a touch of coconut, with bits of cookies, passion fruit or açaí (an energetic local berry).

The concept was created by the Future Group, a São Paulo-based brand activation agency we have been using for experiential marketing in collaboration with the Toddy Brand Team led by Claudia Pires and Victoria Gabrielli.

Our Toddy Van will be touring beaches along the coast of Rio and São Paulo, throughout the summer. We will also be taking the experience to orphanages and social projects in association with local NGO's.

Fun way to motivate kids to brush

I've noticed that my two daughters are taking more time brushing their teeth ever since my wife bought them the Firefly® Toothbrush. If you haven't seen one, this is a toothbrush with a light that flashes during 60 seconds helping children develop proper brushing habits. My girls like to dim the bathroom light and see the flashing effect on the mirror.

What a great product concept and what a smart name. It's one of those simple ideas that I wish I had early in my career when I worked in the oral care category.

Another cool idea in the toothbrush world is the Volight® Toothbrush Sanitzer - a system that eliminates bacteria that thrive in the warm, moist environment of bathrooms. The sanitizer, beautifully dsigned by Philippe Stark, uses technology common in hospitals: a germicidal UV bulb to kill germs. A blue glow lets you know the sanitizer is working.

Interesting to see how both innovations use light in a smart way.

Small cars with big ideas

Since returning to Brazil two years ago, my wife and I decided to keep costs and our Family carbon emissions low so we opted to have only one car.  She drops me off at work in the morning and I catch a cab back home. It has forced me to walk more, bike more on week-ends and carpool. However, in the past few months I found myself in a few situations where I thought I needed my own transportation.  The other night, after speaking to students at a local university, I found myself walking under the rain at 11:00pm looking for a cab. 

So, this week-end I decided to go to a few dealers looking for a small car.  I test drove two fun imports:  a Mini-Cooper and Fiat's new Cinquecento, with the retro styling I love. 

I also read an interesting article about Toyota's totally new IQ - the world's smallest 4-seater.  I found this video posted on YouTube this week which reveals the six space-saving ideas that were incorporated in the design which the video says will be applied to future projects.  To make it a perfect choice, I wish it were electric. 

For someone like me living in a metropolis like Sao Paulo with tough traffic and limited parking space, these are the type of vehicles that make a lot of sense.

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World's Largest Doritos making more headlines

Our World's Largest Doritos bag is making headlines around the globe. We tracked online buzz from Spain, France, Argentina, Venezuela and today I was happy to see the story make it to Advertising Age. 

Big bag... big news.

The Economist on 2009

The Economist has issued 'The World in 2009', a compilation of predictions for the year ahead. This edition carries an article from Brazil's President Lula da Silva entitled 'Building on the B in BRIC'.

Click here to read the article at economist.com

Portugal catches the Wave of the Future

Last night, the TV Globo evening news aired an interesting report on wave energy. I decided to learn more about it online. The Portuguese Government has launched, what is being called the World's first commercial-scale wave power station, off the coast of Aguçadoura near the city of Porto. The technology uses the motion of ocean waves to create power. The wave energy converters, that look like a huge snake floating in the ocean, were built by a Scottish company called Pelamis Wave Power, and are made up of connected sections that flex as the tide moves creating electricity. This innovative project is already generating electricity to approximately 1,500 families.

Portugal has had an historic connection with the sea when they led the age of exploration during the 15th and 16th centuries so I thought it was pretty cool that they are now taking the lead in wave power - what could become one of the clean energies of the future. 

I found this demo on YoutTube that explains how the technology works... 

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Touchscreens showing up everywhere

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone the world became fascinated by the magic of a fingertip on the phone's screen controlling all the features. HP has done the same with its new TouchSmart family of PCs featuring software designed specifically for touch. Without using a keyboard or mouse, people can do a lot of different things like play music, access files and playlists, zoom in or out of photos or check the stock market (well nowadays maybe you don't want to do that...).

It's interesting to see how touch screen technology is showing up everywhere from check-in kiosks at airports to self-checkouts in supermarkets to digital photo processing at your local drugstore.

HP's new TouchSmart computer will certainly open a wide range of new applications. I'm guessing one of them will be providing elementary school kids with a more interactive and fun learning experience.

Click below to see the demo...

New Campaign on Open Science

Du Pont has initiated a campaign here in Brazil to promote its Open Science platform. Following the footsteps of P&G and IBM, here's another example of a company embracing open innovation as a way to transform the way it brings new ideas to life. With the growth of technology and a business environment that has taken a more collaborative approach, it's fascinating to see how R&D is going through a significant change. R&D teams, which used to take a very internal approach relying on their own research capabilities, are becoming more open to developing partnerships with academic institutions, NGO's or through companies like Innocentive.

New times require new thinking.

Here's the 'Open Science' TV campaign posted on Du Pont's corporate website...

Time to learn from an online movement that has made History

Last week, I spent some time with a few members of our marketing team going over the Barak Obama for America website. We are in the middle of reviewing a prototype of a cool online collaboration project and I thought it would be instructive to learn from the Obama movement. Wow, did we get a lot of inspiring lessons. Valuable lessons on how to focus on the message in simple direct terms with no distractions, as well as how they created actionable online resources to allow everyday people to spark the movement within their local community. Brilliantly done. 

A few days later, our account executive at AlmapBBDO told me the agency is finalizing a comprehensive review of the entire campaign to share with clients and create of forum for discussion on how businesses like ours can learn from this historic movement and fine tune our communication strategies. Although the campaign is over, it's amazing to see how the Obama Movement has changed they way the market will look at the internet as a powerful force of engagement and collaboration. 

Lessons from a Cultural Movement that understood like never before, that it's all about YOU.

TV Networks adapting to the challenges of the large and small screen

Last Friday, I had lunch with two executives at Rede Globo, Brazil's largest and most influential TV network. Great conversation.  They mentioned two fascinating dynamics that are reshaping the TV business:  the large screen and the small screen.  

With high-definition and very large flat screens invading homes all over the country, the network has had to make significant investments in technology upgrades (small production imperfections are now more visible than ever).  On the other hand, because of the radical improvement in video capabilities of mobile phones, the emergence of the iPhone and the availability of a number of mobile devices designed specifically to watch TV programming and movies, a new model is emerging.  A mobile TV model that will have a major impact on how content is produced or re-edited and also have a significant impact on agencies and advertisers as we all learn how to optimize the message to fit on a small screen. With so much at stake, it's not surprising that Globo already has Brazil's most popular website offering streaming video called Globo Videos. 

A few ad-supported models offering streaming video of TV shows and movies are becoming mainstream, like already popular Hulu.

Similar to what happened on the internet, it will be exciting to see which marketers are first to crack the code on providing people with new and engaging experiences on the small screen. 

It's a brave new mobile world that allows content anywhere, anytime, in any pocket.

Jimmy Wales in Sao Paulo

Yesterday, I had the wonderful opportunity to listen to Jimmy Wales, the brilliant mind behind one of the most powerful forces in user-generated content. His Wikipedia (which I can't live without), and its vision of the 'sum of all human knowledge' is a non-profit movement that mobilizes hundreds of thousands of people around the globe who collaborate to create the library for the age of knowledge. The story of the movement he has created is inspiring and perfectly aligned with a time in which people are empowered, more than ever, to create like never before.

The speech took place in São Paulo as part of the HSM Expo Management week and sponsored by Telefonica.

Tim Brown from IDEO on the power of play

This month posted on TED, a deliciously inspiring speech with Tim Brown, CEO of innovation and design firm IDEO, called "The Powerful Link Between Creativity and Play" as part of the 2008 Serious Play Conference.

He talks about how certain behaviors we have learned as kids (exploration, building, role play) can be powerful tools in the process of creative thinking.

Click below to be inspired...

For Brazilian consumers hungry to taste the world

This month, our snacks marketing team is coming out with a repositioning for our STAX® line - potato chips in plastic tubes for convenient on-the-go consumption. We have been in the market in Brazil with STAX® since late 2006 with three basic flavors: original, sour cream & onion and cheddar cheese.  We were in search of a brand idea that could help us better differentiate ourselves, as well as, a creative platform that can allow us to better execute at the point of sale.

The new positioning is STAX® For those hungry to taste the world - taking consumers on a journey of flavors from different parts of the world. As Brazil starts playing a growing role in the global scene, young adults have a natural curiosity for what's beyond our borders. In fact, traveling is high on the dream list of our core target group. Tapping into a an amazing portfolio of authentic flavors that have been developed in other International operations, we researched and identified four flavors that resonate well with local consumers (in addition to the original flavor for those who just love a traditional potato chip).  This the new flavor line-up:

Thailand - Sweet Thai Chilli

Argentina - Barbecue

England - Sour Cream & Onion

America - Cheddar cheese

The repositioning work was led by Roberto Angelino, Carla Araujo and her marketing team Alexandre Chiavegatti and Carol Gormezano. The packaging graphics was developed by Cornerstone - a NY-based design firm that has opened a studio in São Paulo. On the back panel, you can find cultural and gastronomic tips from each flavor destination.