Back to the Future

It's the end of February 2011, but in Brazil I think it might be February 1985. Which is to say, consumerism is making its grand entrance here in a way that takes me back to Britain in the mid-80s - and the heated debates that accompanied it. Fellow Brazilians, I've seen the future and it's ... complicated. But a lot better than military dictatorship or South American-style socialism.

I'm moved to make this declaration because I've just been reading a Google-translated web page of an interview in Brazil's main marketing magazine. It's with a "philosopher-economist-writer" and no doubt several other omniscient labels to his name.

The marketing mag interviewer sits at the feet of the Great Man and listens to his pearls of wisdom on the changing face of society, technology and, of course, marketing. I could only read some of the interview because the rest requires a subscription (good marketing, must try that myself on this blog). But it was enough for me to know that I didn't care to read more (on second thoughts, scrap the blog subscription idea).

Propaganda

When I first heard the word "propaganda" used in Latin languages to mean what in English is called "advertising", I laughed. The sinister connotations of the p-word to a native English speaker sit uncomfortably with the notion that advertising is more good than bad, being a necessary ingredient of free markets.

I was reminded of this linguistic awkwardness the other day while extracting an eye-popping R$ 30 from my unhappy pocket for a magazine called Exame. Justification for this outrageously high price could no doubt be found in the red and white banner above the masthead, proclaiming "Special Edition in English". Note the ever-present not-quite-correct use of English by second-class translations. It should have read: "Special English Edition", an admittedly minor correction but setting the tone for the more egregious grammatical and stylistic errors elsewhere.

Order & Progress

So here I am in Sao Paulo, and here I have been for 3.5 months, helping to raise my beautiful half-Brazilian baby boy and setting up the Brazil office for a new international digital agency, Queensberry Rules Media (stay tuned).

First impressions of this first-time visitor ? Well, I'm reminded of the old joke in which a Western visitor to Soviet Russia asks a tight-lipped Communist to sum up, in a word, life in the USSR. After a pregnant pause the Russian replies: "Good". The Westerner then asks for a slightly more expansive description, in more than a word. After an even longer pause, his interlocutor elaborates: "Not good."

Obviously present-day Brazil is not pre-Glasnost USSR ! But to my foreign eye there are some disturbing parallels when it comes to groupthink within insular societies. More of which later.