The spirit of Rio in a bottle.

Fun, sarcastic and silly headline driven campaign for Rio Carioca beer that sums up the spirit of Rio quite nicely. My favorite line is “When it’s winter in the north, it’s summer in rio. When it’s Summer in the north, it’s summer in Rio.”

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Bola Pra Frente Institute – "Shots of change" billboards from bulletholes

When the Bola Pra Frente Institute needed to attract 600 kids to their open spots in their sports & education after school program, they had one rather large problem. Operating in one of the most violent favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Favela do Muquiço, there were no advertising billboards to advertising on. No poster sites, no direct mail.

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Bola Pra Frente Institute – "Shots of change" billboards from bulletholes

When the Bola Pra Frente Institute needed to attract 600 kids to their open spots in their sports & education after school program, they had one rather large problem. Operating in one of the most violent favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Favela do Muquiço, there were no advertising billboards to advertising on. No poster sites, no direct mail.

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tags: 

Coca-Cola "Gold feelings" (2016) 1:00 (Brazil)

What does it feel like to win gold? Coke asked that question and got the answers from some winners like taekwondo star Jade Jones, water polo player Petar Muslim, hurdler Sally Pearson and more. I guess it’s better than asking potential hopefuls what it’s like to pull out over zika fears.

Reclame Aqui "Payback dinner" (2016) 2:12 (Brazil)

Reclame Aqui is the leading customer complaint site in Brazil. To celebrate its 15th anniversary, Grey came up with a clever idea called “Payback dinner.” They invited business executives from some of the companies with the most number of complaints (accordingt o Reclame Aqui users) to a dinner. There, they got a taste of their own medicine. Hehehe.

Origens Brasil – Imaflora (2016) 1:55 (Brazil)

Origens Brasil - Imaflora (2016) 1:55 (Brazil)
By empowering small local producers and giving them reasons to stay in the Amazon, they’ll stay in the Amazon and won’t sell their forest to illegal loggers. Using QR Codes, it connects consumers to producers. Each product has a different logo, which leads to a different story. Details include the producer, what region they are in, photos of people harvesting the ingredients, his tribe and more. This way, Brazilians living elsewhere will hopefully start to think of the rainforest as a place where people actually live and thrive, and not just some place “over there.” QR Code trees to preserve real trees. Neat idea. I don’t know how big QR code usage is in Brazil, but hopefully its sizable enough to make a difference.

Guys Bribe Their Girlfriends to Watch Soccer Alone in Heineken Ad With an Awesome Twist

What if you had the perfect excuse to watch the UEFA Champions League Final at an epic Heineken party … without your girlfriend?

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Instituto Ayrton Senna "The heart of Brazil" (2016) 1:07 (Brazil)

Nothing beats winning at home is the takeaway from this inspiring spot from the Instituto Ayrton Senna. If you’re not familiar, Senna was one of the greatest F1 drivers ever, whose life was sadly cut short in a horrible crash. This story recounts in Senna’s own words one of his most difficult races he ever won in 1991.

Even cooler, they are distributing the story through an augmented reality app attached to a charm bracelet that is being distributed to the Brazilian delegation with 32,000 more bracelets now in production. “Our goal was to show athletes the excitement and pride that Ayrton Senna always had about being Brazilian and competing for something for his country,” says Gustavo Soares, Creative Director of J. Walter Thompson. He says that in addition to the values that motivated Senna, printed on the inside of the bracelet, the charm carries the driver’s unique message, that only after the eighth attempt was he able to realize his dream of winning at home. “What ended up being his most epic win,” he adds.

It’s a great way of linking one sport with multiple sports. Also the animation looks pretty sweet, too.

LDC "The match rackets" (2016) 1:37 (Brazil)

Gustavo Kuerten is a former Brazilian tennis champion. He also has a charity in his name that helps underprivileged and handicapped children through sports. To help his charity (and his personal brand) LDC created special rackets with strings depicting the tennis ball trajectory of his most greatest wins. The strings represent his career defining matches. The rackets were then auctioned off to benefit his charity. Really cool idea and a nice piece of art in the process, that helps a good cause, too.

Want Fresh Produce? This Agency Helped a Grocer Grow Food Right in the Store

As if self-checkout and bagging our own groceries at the supermarket weren’t humiliating enough, now we’re expected to harvest our own vegetables in the produce section! 

Supermarket chain Zona Sul recently transformed shelves at its Rio de Janeiro-based flagship store into vegetable gardens, encouraging customers to dig into the soil to pick lettuce, basil, peppers and scallions. 

“We mainly wanted to reach Zona Sul customers who shop for vegetables in other locations, such as street markets or vegetable-specific stores,” Fábio Onofre, creative director at agency WMcCann Rio, tells AdFreak. “Those are the customers that still think they can find fresher food elsewhere. This way, we could truly show them that at Zona Sul, everything is really, really fresh.”

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Some Very Ugly Fish Star in This Bizarre Ad About Investigative Journalism

The news is like the ocean. On the surface, everything might seem pretty, but the further down you go, the worse things look. 

That, at least, is the metaphor behind a new ad from Veja, a popular right-leaning (if not right-wing) Brazilian magazine that featured President Obama as Che Guevara on its cover in 2014. 

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Kiss FM "Long Live Rock n Roll" (2016) 1:24 (Brazil)

Rock’s drowned, played Russian roulette and lost, OD’d on all manner of drugs, been stabbed and shot, been in several plane crashes, had all manner of cancers, choked on a cocktail cherry, choked himself to death, etc. And you know what If Rock hasn’t died yet, it’s going to live forever. Nice way of commenting on all the rock stars who have died over the years. Everyone from Buddy Holly, to Brian Jones to er, Michael Hutchence is referenced. Can you name them all?

VEJA "Fishes" (2016) :48 (Brazil)

VEJA magazine takes us down deep– how deep? Really freaking deep, to show you what it’s like when you go deep into a topic. In this case it’s 5,000 meters. All to make the point that the deeper you go, the uglier it gets. I really like the analogy here, and fewer ones would work better. Not being familiar with the magazine I assume it’s of the investigative journalism kind. If that’s the case, with everything going on in Brazil right now, they have their work cut out for them, I think.

How HP Turned Unwritten Stories of Illiterate Brazilians Into Books Printed in Real Time

Imagine if there were an easy way for people who can’t read and write to share their life experiences with the world. HP and agency AlmapBBDO took a crack at coming up with one, focusing on some of the 13 million illiterate individuals in Brazil, as part of a touching new campaign called “Magic Words.”

First, AlmapBBDO sourced 30 such people from around the country, including rural areas and big cities like São Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. Then, it used Google Speech’s voice-recognition software to transcribe their stories, and publish them in a paperback book, created using an HP printer. A documentary followed the effort, and retold it in documentary format.

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Special Dog – Sofa / Smell (2016) :35 (Brazil)

Special Dog - Sofa / Smell (2016) :35 (Brazil)
Like the “Widow” ad, this one has a dog witness something rather, icky. The soundtrack is amazing and really makes the spot, A9 Audio did a great job. He knows too much! Treat him well. See also Bondage.

Special Dog – Window / Ashes (2016) :35 (Brazil)

Special Dog - Window / Ashes (2016) :35 (Brazil)
A widow has a very strange habit. She takes a spoonful of her husbands ashes in her tea. Why? Immortality? To humiliate him after he’s dead? Who knows. The dog knows. Uh-Oh. He knows too much!

Utterly hilarious ad campaign from DM9DDB that adds a nefarious twist as to why you’d give your dog treats. It’s bribes.

Do not miss the equally hilarious Bondage and Sofa.

Special Dogs – Bondage – (2016) :35 (Brazil)

Special Dogs - Bondage - (2016) :35 (Brazil)
The man jumps around his mansion all chained up and with a ball gag. He finds an umbrella and seems for a moment to be really excited about the possibilities. That’s when he notces the dog, he knows too much, treat him well.

Like Widow and Sofa these ads are made a billion times better by the perfect soundtrack created by A9 Audio adding to the drama. I’ll also give points for excellent casting in both dogs and humans, as this man really made an excellent “excited” face. I still don’t want to know what he might have been considering to use that umbrella for. Ew ew ew. Don’t tell me.

HP "Magic words" (2016) 2:32 (Brazil)

This documentary from AlmapBBDO is for HP. With more than 13 million illiterate people in Brazil, there are a lot of stories that won’t get passed down from generation to generation. Until now. HP has developed technology that records words as text-to-speech and then prints them in real time. So stories like the ones you see in this documentary will live on as will the lives of the people who told them, even if they don’t know how to write it down themselves. Fascinating.

89FM "Truth detector radio" (2016) 1:54 (Brazil)

If you haven’t been keeping up with Brazilian politics, you should know that they have a big credibility gap at the moment. To capitalize on this mistrust, 89FM created Truth Detector radio, in which they invited figures from Brazilian society strap into a lie detector and get interviewed to see whether or not they are telling the truth. These interviewees include Oscar Maroni, who sounds like the Larry Flynt of Brazil, and supermodel Renata Kuerten. They even took on Zika with Leonard Weissmann, a government infectologist as well as Inri Cristo who claims to be Jesus.
The results of the lie detector are sent to RDF’s in cars and smart phones.
Neat idea. I was wondering if they’d get any actual politicians on the show. After the success of the first season, for the second season, they decided to invite a bunch of politicians, sending out invitations to 94 of them. None of the politicians accepted. Considering Brazil’s human rights record under its dictatorship, they should consider that a blessing. Esto dizendo, caras.

Pedigree "14 anos" (2016) 1:31 (Brazil)

How would you live if you only had 14 years to live? Thought provoking and inspiring animated film for Pedigree from Almap BBDO.