After diving into the social media scenes in China and Italy, the fourth installment of our Globally Social Series will take you to the second most populous country in the Americas – Brazil. Unlike the other three BRIC countries that have their own home-grown social platforms, Brazil is dominated by foreign mainstream social networks. This undoubtedly aids brand marketers with the learning curve they have to face when breaking into new emerging markets. Read on to find out where Brazilians are on social and what’s buzzing there.
Third Biggest Country On Facebook And Instagram As a developing country that has just over 50% Internet penetration, Brazil is surprisingly taking a substantial share of the global social media market. According to eMarketer, Brazilians represent the third largest Facebook user group as of May 2014.
When it comes to the younger and trendier social platform, Instagram, Brazil was reported to be the third biggest source of traffic during the first quarter of 2015. One might argue this strong social media presence has a lot to do with Brazil being the world’s fifth most populated country, but this population is also the most actively engaged. Comscore’s latest data has shown that Brazilians spend more than 21 minutes per social media visit, which is the longest of any other countries and 60% longer than the world average.
It’s Either Soccer Or Telenovelas Brazilian’s fascination with social media seems like a natural reflection of their hyper-social tendencies — they love to chat and share with each other. According to a survey conducted jointly by Social@Ogilvy and Survey Monkey, more than 70% of Brazil social media users “usually or always share content online.” Interestingly, the types of content they love are very specific — sports and soap operas. Brazilian native and football superstar, Neymar, has a staggering fan base of more than 28 million followers on Instagram. Telenovela actresses enjoy impressive followings on social media as well.
Brazilian’s social lives are so in tune with TV series that Unilever even ran its Facebook advertising campaigns based on the timeline of hit soap opera Avenida Brasil. Pretty Faces And Fit Bodies From Gisele Bündchen to Adriana Lima and Alessandra Ambrosio, Brazil has constantly amazed us with its consistent supply of supermodels. It’s almost a no-brainer that the country that produces so much beauty also indulges in all things good-looking. This is probably why the visually-appealing app Instagram has witnessed overwhelming growth — not only did the total user count skyrocket, but brands’ Instagram accounts saw a seven-times increase in engagement from January 2013 to June 2014.
Instagram pictures of Brazilian fitness model/influencer Alice Matos who has 1.2m followers The majority of social media influencers in Brazil are models, actresses and fitness trainers. If you compare the “beauty” content created by Brazilian influencers to that of American influencers, you can see that where Americans aim to create magazine-style editorial content, Brazilian influencers model their looks with photos of themselves and selfies. For instance, the Instagram pictures of Marianna Hewitt look like professionally-edited fashion shoots that take careful consideration of lighting, background and spatial dimensions. However, Bruna Unzueta’s photos, a Brazilian beauty blogger with similar follower counts, are more like the kind of simple, less polished selfies anyone might take casually.
Brazilian beauty blogger Bruna Unzueta
LA-based fashion and lifestyle influencer Marianna Hewitt As one of the four golden brick nations that have fast-emerging middle-classes of consumers, Brazil ought to be on every savvy marketer’s expansion map. By tying your social content with people’s everyday chatter and leveraging their heavy social media usage, brands can stand to win big time as social media continues to dominate in Brazil. Disclaimer: Our Globally Social Series is written about #teaminstabrand’s experiences working with, living in and researching the regions we cover. Social media adapts and changes quickly across the world and any inaccuracies or anachronisms may be due to changes in restrictions and censoring in certain countries. Our team continues to research thoroughly and cites information wherever possible. We welcome your comments, feedback, and interaction with this series – keep reading for more!
