raphaelpontual
I am not made of beautiful drawings. I am made of ideas, and ideas are like this: simple, being black&white or colored, straight, and capable of telling stories.
Just willing to show the world that I may not be the
best "photoshoper" of America, but I am addicted to create solutions, whether they are for an advertising campaign or for a dripping faucet at 4 AM.
EMBRATUR is starting a new phase in its communication strategy, trying to present Brazil through experiences rather than through textual and photographic content. And that is exactly what the challenge was: how could we present such a diverse country using digital media to a public that is becoming more and more demanding?
We sought the solution in Sweden, partnering with an interactive video production company that creates clips where the user can control the camera angle. We then captured images from the 12 host cities of the World Cup 2014 and created a completely new experience for potential tourists: they could now take a stroll through Brazil even if they were thousands of miles away.
Understanding that, when we talk about tourism, our product - Brazil - needs to be more than a possible destination but rather a brand with high relevance and presence for tourists, the customer made a special demand: use mobile platforms to sell Brazil's image.
Since the goal was to improve Brazil's branding and not just sell a travel guide, we decided to engage our audience in a more playful style, and so decided to create a game. The story's main character used to live in a sad, gloomy planet, when an unexpected event brought him to Brazil and brought his life upside down. Now he'll be given the chance to have fun in Brazilian soil and take it back to his home planet. Thus, we created not just a mobile game, but also an entirely new format for tourist guides.
A Chevrolet dealership contacted us and reported they were having difficulty selling a specific car model: the Cobalt. With that in mind, we needed to create a campaign that introduced people to the car in an innovative way.
To advertise the Chevrolet Cobalt we created the Rescue-drive. We partnered with a tow car company and took the car to the public at the moment when they're thinking about buying a new car the most: when their car breaks down. When the tow car was called a Chevrolet Cobalt came along, and was introduced to the person who had made the call. From then the consumer was invited to take a test drive to his original destination on a brand new car. With that campaign, the Orca Chevrolet Dealership managed to transform a usually uncomfortable moment into a carefree, pleasant experience for the people involved.
Thousands of underage Brazilians are victims of sexual abuse. To raise public awareness, the True Affection campaign was launched with a symbol that could represent people's engagement: A HUG. Artists have joined the campaign and given their hugs, but we needed more.
Using projection, we created the illusion that Rio's Christ the Redeemer monument was actually closing its arms in an embrace. The more people embraced the cause, the bigger a hug the monument would give.
Creation of a campaign for the Young Lions Cannes project in Brazil. We were asked to reach young advertisers with full impact.
To present the project to Brasília advertisers, then, nothing better than using a personality directly linked to the every-day work of this public. Since Brasília is the capital, much of the funding for advertising comes from government clients. Thus, in many ways the last word for the approval of publicity campaigns in town comes from Her Excellency President Dilma. We leveraged the immense success reached by comedian Gustavo Mendes and his tongue-in-cheek impressions of the President and created a movie where the character would be approving an advertising campaign. With very (in)appropriate language, success was instantaneous.
EMBRATUR invited us to create a campaign during the London Olympics to generate brand recall for the thousands of tourists attending the event.
We decided, once again, to make the unbelievable. We placed a hundred-feet-high water curtain at the London Eye and enhanced it with lights, vibrant images and an exciting soundtrack to give visitors the impression they were under the waters of the River Thames. The campaign ran on the last day of the Olympics, and was so successful that all international media outlets reported it as a great passing of the baton from London to Rio, the next host of the games.
The challenge was to create a new Youtube channel in Brazil where users could have a new experience watching videos of the country.
Being aware that one of the biggest problems tourists interested in Brazil have is locating cities and tourist sights, we created the first branded channel YouTube that interacted with Google Maps. While the videos were played, users could follow on the map - in real time - the location of that particular scene of the film.
Brasilia has the last drive-in theater in Brazil. As big cinema chains entered the country the drive-in theater lost more and more ground, eventually being forgotten by the local public. We created a stunt to remind Brazilians of the importance and the beauty of the drive-in theater, with a focus on serving the end result on Youtube. The aim was clear: to not let people forget outdoor cinema, and (mainly) to attract new customers to the client.
We realized that every car horn has a specific tone. With that in mind, and aware of the kind of feature that allows videos to generate high impact and engagement, we went for the unbelievable: to create an orchestra exclusively with car horns and have it play the greatest classics of movie soundtracks. The idea was to create a sort of Rock Band for cars: we lined up the cars according to horn tone and, after that, whenever a bright light was shone into a row of cars the drivers from that row would trigger the horn for as long as the light was on. Movies + cars = drive-in theater. Status: Approved by client, in pre-production.
EMBRATUR wanted to publicize the Brazil brand during the US winter, and wanted to do it in a way that engaged people in a meaningful way that could generate long-lasting branding benefits.
We decided to take some of Brazil's heat to NYC. For that, we made reference to the traditional snowglobes, and created a sunglobe right in the middle of New York. People could come in and take pictures, or ask a photographer hired for the campaign to take a picture for them. The photo was printed on the spot and the person would bring it home, making the Brazil brand a more constant reminder in the minds of Americans.
A small English school sought us and offered the challenge of presenting their brand to young audiences. With the little budget they had, we found that the best solution would be a rapid diffusion digital campaign.
We leveraged the hype around the show LOST and the trend seen with young people to download the episodes, creating subtitle files where the first 30 seconds of the film (a recap of the previous episode) had the subtitles all wrong, creating a fun story totally diverse from the original. With the concept "Don't be held hostage to other people's English," the campaign has received international acclaim and awards.