Understanding the current state of national communication trends, as well as the dynamics between advertising agencies and their clients, is the focus of this report.
The data is compared with previous iterations of the study and with data from Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, Spain, India, Mexico, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, among the other countries studied.
With the analysis of over 700 advertiser-agency relationships, this study surveyed a total of 785 professionals, including 372 marketing executives from 272 advertising companies and 413 professionals from 86 different agencies. The majority of the marketing managers surveyed work in Sao Paulo (85%), consist primarily of women (57%), are on average 40 years old, have worked for their current employer for almost seven years, and have been in their current role for more than four of those years.
In terms of numbers, the most common job title is “director of marketing/advertising” (29%). Nearly half of them (47% to be exact) are employed by multinational corporations based in other countries. There is a high concentration of agency managers in Sao Paulo (90%), and these managers tend to be male (55%). On average, they have been with their current agency for six years, and in their current role for five. The majority of participating agencies were integrated/advertising firms (64%) and were part of a global network (62%). Nearly all of the professionals surveyed hold managerial positions (97%).
The time period spanning May and September of 2022 was dedicated to the fieldwork.
In this version, 3.5% of advertising agencies’ billing goes towards marketing, communication, and advertising. A number that’s slightly higher than what was predicted for 2020 and about the same as the average projection for the years between 2014 and 2020 (3.8%). The ratio is above 4% in India and South Africa, but is below 2% in the other nine markets studied.
This year, the digital sector in Brazil receives 49.9% of the total budget, up from 45.1% in 2020. A number that has increased by more than 100% in the last 8 years. Brazil is the third largest market where the Agency Scope is implemented with the largest marketing, communication, and advertising budget allocated to digital, behind only China and Mexico.
In Brazil, ATL advertising receives 34.2% of budgetary resources and Live Marketing receives 15.9%. Paid digital media receives the largest share of the digital marketing budget (39.3%), followed by social media and influencers (28.2%) and search engines – SEO / SEM- (16.0%).
Strategic planning, digital strategy, creativity, media planning, and data (analytics/measurement) are the five agency disciplines most often mentioned by marketers as being crucial for their businesses.
Advertisers and their agencies are having shorter and shorter working relationships.
Ad agencies and their Brazilian clients have been working together on average for 3.7 years, down from 4.1 years in the previous report. However, the length of these partnerships varies considerably by agency type and the size of the businesses they serve. Thus, the average duration of relationships between independent agencies and medium-sized companies is shorter (2.9 years) than that of relationships between group agencies and large companies (5.1 years) (3.9 years).
Approximately 80% of advertisers have a long-term relationship with their agencies.
Eight out of ten Brazilian advertisers have ongoing relationships with their agencies, while the other two work with them on a project basis only. The largest percentage of long-term partnerships are reported by group agencies and major advertising firms.
Furthermore, the average duration of relationships within a given project has decreased from 6.6 months in 2020 to 5.4 months in this edition. More work in China is done on a project basis (51%), while in Chile it is done on a continuous basis (88%).
In the last decade, the share of advertisers who provide year-end bonuses to their agencies has nearly doubled.
14.9% of the accounts analysed in this edition reward their agencies with a bonus at year’s end for the quality of their service (up from 8.9% in 2020). This incentive is paid at a higher rate (15.4% of base pay on average) to group agencies.
Advertising bonuses are used most frequently (36.2% of the time) in Chile and least frequently (12% of the time) in China of the countries studied.
These are the two most successful campaigns from the past two years.
Ita, which has risen two spots to first place, is followed by McDonald’s, which has climbed six spots to second place, and Burger King, which is in third place, when advertisers in Brazil highlight the best campaigns that have been carried out in the last two years (first in 2020).
Of note is Avon, which has risen to ninth place this year after being omitted from the previous volume.
The brands whose marketing strategies are most admired
Again topping the list of companies that marketers look up to for their marketing and communication strategies is Ita (#2 in 2020), followed by McDonald’s (#2) and Burger King (#3), both of which have climbed three spots from last time.
