Back up system for our MacBook

Ever since we bought our MacBook a few years ago we have been carelessly using it without any back up system which obviously made me very worried. 

So, enough of procrastination.  I just got back from São Paulo's new Apple authorized dealer called A2YOU where I finally upgraded our MacBook to the Mac OS X Leopard which comes with Time Machine. Time Machine automatically keeps a copy of everything we have on our Mac... our digital photos, music and my wife's recipes. What's really cool is that it not only keeps a copy of every file, it remembers how our system looked on any specific day, which means we can revisit how our computer appeared in the past.  I wish I had the same capabilities with the computer we use at the office.

I also bought the Western Digital My Passport for Mac, a portable hard drive that I found simple to use and easy to carry around on future business trips.  A great combination for peace of mind. No more worries.

A cool example of how books are evolving...

Yesterday, I was at a bookstore looking for a gift for our 7-year-old who has shown an interest in how the human body works. I found this amazing book called "The Human Body" an editorial partnership between DK (Dorling Kindersley) and Google. What's fantastic about this book is that each chapter comes with a key word that the reader can go online for additionbal information and cool 3D models and graphs. I later found out that this particular book is part of a family of books called e.guides, covering other topics like space, earth, weather, ancient civilizations, plants, insects...

This is definetely a great concept that shows how books are evolving. I love how they combined the editorial strength of a wonderful publishing house like DK (which I've been a huge fan of since I bought my first Eyewitness travel guide about 10 years ago) with the web capabilities of Google. Awesome!

Toy Art haven in South Beach

Walking in South Beach this afternoon, I walked into Kidrobot, this fantastic store featuring the coolest collection of toy arts. In Sao Paulo, you find interesting toys here and there but I haven't seen such a great collection in one venue like this before. Back at th hotel, I went online to learn more about it. I found out the concept was created by designer Paul Budnitz in 2002. There are store in New York, San Francisco, Toronto, London and the Miami store I visited.

The website says that...
"Kidrobot merges urban street trends, fashion, and pop art to produce limited edition, collectible toys and apparel. Kidrobot products feature unique collaborations with top international artists with backgrounds as diverse as graffiti, fine art, fashion, industrial design, graphic design, illustration, and music."

Worth visting next time you go to South Beach...

True North on Oscar Night

One of the downsides of living in Sao Paulo is that I miss the advertising break during big media events like the Super Bowl (which makes me realize that cable operators could easily benefit from a pay-per-view package including the original advertising targeting the local marketing and advertising community). I'm in Miami this week getting away from the carnival frenzy back home. So, I was able to watch the Oscar's ceremony on Sunday night with some friends in Coral Gables.

Knowing True North - Frito-Lay's new line of premium natural nut snacks - was scheduled to make a huge impact at the Oscar's, I took some bags I bought at Whole Foods to share with my friends (they loved the pistachio crisps).

The campaign is awesome, telling stories of real people who are doing something extraordinary with their lives.... finding their true north. The TV spot I particularly loved was called “Inspiration Café,” which tells the inspiring story of Lisa Nigro, the founder of a restaurant that serves the homeless and provides job training and fellowship to its customers.

Beautifully inspiring...

Dinner with Tom Szaky

Last night, I had dinner with Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle - a business model created while he was in Princeton - that is completely redefining the concept of recycling. Cool guy with cool ideas. Tom is leading an amazing green revolution, enlisting consumer brigades all over America to collect used soda bottles, plastic bags and candy wrappers and transforming this garbage into amazing products, from fertilizers to messenger bags to backpacks.

Last year, Inc. Magazine called Terracyle
'The Coolest Little Start-Up in America'.












Tom Szaky's fascinating TerraCycle story is truly inspirational. Click below to see an overview I found on YouTube. It will certainly make you look at garbage in whole new way.

Online destinations I enjoy...

A few online destinations I enjoy...

Scott Goodson's Writings by the inspirational creative mind behind StrawberryFrog__ an agency that is all about the power of sparking cultural movements.  

IDEO Eyes Open defines itself as a gathering place for interesting experiences that resonate with emerging themes in our lives, our communities, and our world. 

Trendwatching is always a fun place to go to read about trends that are emerging around the world captured by over 8,000 spotters.

For those you have a connection to Brazil and read in Portuguese, Update Or Die is an awesome example of the power of collaboration.  A new generation of Brazilian talents, in the field of advertising, journalism, marketing and technology have teamed up to produce one of the country's most influential blogs. 

Also try Alexandre Van Beeck's blog. A new voice who has a good eye for insights, marketing trends and how new technologies are reshaping the landscape. I can always count on Van Beeck's blog to find something new.

O Pequi is a wonderful blog that celebrates design, photography and fashion.  A nice pause after a week of powerpoints and business proposals.

Gearing up for FIFA World Cup 2014

São Paulo Futebol Clube is Brazil's most successful soccer team in recent years with six national titles. Their home stadium, Morumbi, is going through a major transformation in preparation for FIFA World Cup 2014.  The project is designed by Ruy Ohtake, one of Brazil's most celebrated architects. 

Friday, I went to visit the first visible change of this transformation, what is called the Morumbi Concept Hall__ a soccer-themed entertainment area similar to what you see in European and North American sport venues but unheard of in Brazil. A stunning Reebok Store (the largest in Brazil) and the Santo Paulo Restaurant where we had lunch overlooking the pitch are both in full operation. Next to the restaurant, UCI is building two cinemas. VISA has launched a service called PassFirst in which members have access to 20,000 seats and special treatment using their cards.  It's not enough just to go an watch a match, sports are a fantastic opportunity for brands to provide a powerful marketing experience.  The World Cup will certainly elevate the game in the area of sports marketing in this country.

On the outside, the stadium has plans to renovate the parking area and build a monorail that will link a nearby subway station to the stadium gates.  

How can GPS applications make us feel more safe?

A member of my innovations team was taken at gunpoint by two men while she was parking in her grandmother's garage.  She was then taken by two men and held hostage in a deserted area of São Paulo for an hour, while one of the assailants drove off to an ATM machine with her card. The terrible incident made me realize that there is a tremendous opportunity for mobile operators, police officials and banks to collaborate in the development of GPS applications that could potentially minimize the risk of something like this happening.  I recently read an article in Wired about a service in the U.S. called SafetyNet, built to be used on the Android Platform. You select bad neighborhoods in the SafetyNet's map, so in case you end up in a sketchy part of town, your phone automatically switches into what they call 'watchdog mode'.  In case you feel threatened, you just shake the phone and an alarm goes off sending your location to friends and family.  It sounds like an interesting concept.  However, in a city like São Paulo where you can run into a dangerous situation practically anywhere, I'm sure the service would need to be redesigned.  

With the proliferation of location-aware phones, it's only a matter of time for someone to develop a killer application that can provide a better sense of safety.

Japanese Tin Toys

Last week in Orlando Florida, I had the opportunity of visiting a wonderful little exhibition of Tin Toys, which were incredibly popular in Japan in the 50's and 60's.  Tin aliens, robots, astronauts and vehicles all part of  Tin Toy Master Teruhisa Kitahara's collection, who runs seven museums in Japan with over 50,000 tin toys,

For anyone who has an appreciation for Japanese design and its influence in pop culture (from mangas to fashion to annimated film), will be fascinated with these vintage toys. 

These are a few photos I took of the exhibition...

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.