Fire !

... all your digital marketing agencies because today sees the official launch of the new kid in town, Queensberry Rules Media. If you wish to bring international talent and perspective to your Brazilian online marketing, or if you are a Brazilian company looking to expand abroad, and if value for money means as much to you as it does to us, then please walk this way ...

Mass-market, mass-obesity & mass-murderers

New "obese chairs" on Brazil's subway

An article in FT Magazine discusses the shocking rise of obesity in Brazil. I noticed immediately upon arrival in Sao Paulo how out of shape most people were.

Pretty soon after, having experienced the horrors of shopping in local supermarkets (see blog posts passim), I realised that the poor consumer diet was largely to blame, notably an appalling excess of salt and sugar in almost all processed foods. I also saw the suspicious prominence of a certain company called  Nestlé among the few ubiquitous brand names that kept cropping up. The FT's article makes depressing reading (key extracts at the end of this post). I blame, first and foremost, the Brazilian Government (which perhaps means that really I blame the Brazilian people themselves since in the long run you get what you deserve) but, more specifically, I blame the terrible lack of education here.

Tea-break, Brazilian style

Video.

Things that impress me in Sao Paulo

Hello Stranger !

- Some lovely new friends, including Luiz, Gabriel, Hiroe and Janosch, all exuding a certain warmth and easiness that we might partly credit to the "climate" here.

- The weekend rodizio (fixed-price buffet) at Cachoeira Tropical and Bovinus.

- The new fishpond in my local park, Parque da Luz. Unlike the nearby train station, it wasn't built 100-plus years ago by the British. It's a small sign that this still slightly sleazy area is finally benefiting from some public investment.

- Did I mention my family ties ?

- And on that note, the way that strangers coo and fuss over my little prince in his buggy. The only strangers who did likewise on our recent, admittedly short, visit to Buenos Aires turned out to be Brazilian tourists ! In which other countries would a builder on a tea break alert you to the possible danger of your bebezinho not being properly protected from the sun or rain ? Certainly not in the UK.

- I must also quote my friend Luiz, a Sao Paulo native who returned here after living many years in New York. He says: "I hear your complaints from many people who come from abroad and other parts of Brazil. They hate it in the first year. But as they get to know this Pandora's Box better and to acquire more real friends they end up loving SP."

Things that depress me in Sao Paulo

A night on the tiles ? Perhaps not.

- The high prices.
- The rain.
- The univited wildlife: cockroaches, rats, lizzards and, most of all, the mosquitoes which keep me up at night and now carry the extra threat of Dengue.

- The dearth of vistas, aided by the fact that all planning considerations went out the window when this town began growing.

- The raw, brutal, unvarnished concrete everywhere: ugly buildings (some feebly camouflaged by a bit of childish paint), park benches, sculptures ...which politician got the backhander for this architectural abomination ?

- The gigantic aerial antennae on the roof of downtown buildings, giving the impression of an army camp rather than the "New York City of South America" and reminding you that nothing here is done for the public good, only for the sake of selfish, private interests. How many other key cities in the world have such monstrous carbuncles blighting the landscape ? "Only in Brazil", the land that aesthetics forgot. If they were at least used for decent broadband or WiMAX that might slightly mitigate the ocular offence.

What is a Carre-four in gridlocked Sao Paulo ?

Out of town shopping arose in the 1980s in the UK. The deal was: retailer buys cheaper land and can offer cheaper prices on a greater range of products. Consumer must invest in a car in order to benefit but as a result can also make fewer shopping trips per month.

As city centres were renewed, revitalised and rebranded in the 1990s, the big supermarkets saw an opportunity to reinvent the traditional high street. Thus was born the likes of Tesco Metro and Sainsbury's Local. The city dweller could now benefit from the economies of scale and efficiencies of the big grocery retailers even though the actual store size of these urban outlets was not so large. You paid more than an out of town hypermarket but no car was required.

Booming Brazil revisited

This article is an important counterbalance to my blog's prevailing (downbeat) tone.