“Michael Jackson” at Boston University in a lecture by Advertising Executive Joao Silva.

 In a lecture on night november 29  at Boston University (BU), Brazilian advertising guru Joao Silva, Director of Maria Comunicacao, said that Brazilian economic stability along with new emerging consumers from the low income population have now discovered the power of consumption. This population group represents half of the Brazilian consumers.

Mr. Silva began his lecture showing the video clip "They do not care about us" of Michael Jackson recorded with Olodum in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro and directed by Spike Lee.  This video showed that people appearing in the video are the new consumers in Brazil, and to speak to this audience is necessary to gain knowledge about the culture beyond the realm of language.

Mr. Silva then presented information and data on the Brazilian economy and the industry of communication in the country.  According to Mr. Silva, "President Lula was the main figure for promotion and marketing of Brazil in recent years" and was the role played by the former president when he began traveling the world speaking Portuguese and using products made in Brazil. According to Mr. Silva this contributed a great deal to improving the self-esteem of the Brazilian people and stimulating overall production and domestic consumption, as well as making the whole world become interested in learning about Brazilian culture.

Mr. Silva also told the audience how he worked at the process of creating some of the more than 1,000 brands such as Collor and Olodum. Time was first spent in qualitative and quantitative research to obtain an accurate conceptualization and appropriate strategy for campaigns and actions of successful communication.

According to Mr. Silva he invested 90% of his time collecting and studying information.  The remaining 10% of the time was used to develop a design that is new, daring, provocative, and relevant to the product or service and above all that it is simple for assimilation by the public, which is a priority.

Mr. Silva also presented success stories of Maria Comunicacao such as his billboard campaign,  “Think New!” with Barack Obama which aired in Bahia when the American contender was disputing  the primaries with Hillary Clinton.  Also presented was the billboard, “What’s up Brother!” created to greet President Obama when he visited Brazil.  This caused quite a surprise when the audience was informed that the play/action of the Instituto Maria Preta had generated over 60,000 replications on the Net (websites and blogs) and was the only initiative to greet the American president in Brazil.

He also spoke of the success of the Fair of the Entrepreneur and the artist Carlinhos Brown as the lead in this successful advertising campaign.  He also talked about his campaigns involving cultural markets, real estate, products and services as well as shopping malls, entertainment, government and political marketing.

During a question and answer period with the audience, Mr. Silva used this opportunity to say that the advertising industry in Brazil has the world's best instruments to regulate this industry and explained the role of ABAP, CENP, and CONAR FENAPRO.

Mr. Silva concluded by thanking the organizers of the event including Carlo Neumark, Dr. Celia Bianconi of BU, and Cris Sciaba with the Boston office of  Maria International.  Mr. Silva also presented the audience with Olodum t-shirts (kindly provided by Joao George), the “No Racism Here!” and “Combating Religious Intolerance” from the Instituto Maria Preta.  This same morning Joao Silva also spoke with journalists and business people who have some interest in the Brazilian market.