As a German marketing influencer agency putting a focus on Brazil might not be the most obvious move.
Bold Creators Club has been established out of a fantasy football startup which was successful in Europe, but blew up in South America because of strategic influencer partnerships.
This is why we were diving deeper in the industry, with one key learning: Brazil’s growth influencer marketing is astonishing.
Campaigns with creators become more mature in the US and Europe, but it is in its high growth phase in South America and Asia: Brazil has seen a tremendous 332% YOY growth in sponsored feed posts on Instagram between 2018-2019, behind the South Americans are countries like Japan (151%), Indonesia (123%) and India (60%).
This growth comes with challenges and great opportunities to leverage the momentum.
Bold Creators Club aims to give an overview why Brazil is so attractive for brands right now and in the upcoming years. We want to give you an idea how technology, the people’s mindset and the economic conditions support influencer marketing and brands which want to invest in these creators.
1) Brazil is “new” to the mobile internet
Brazil’s growth influencer marketing has three success factors, the first is the accessibility of mobile digital devices.
When it comes to the connectivity of mobile devices Brazil is years behind the US or Europe, but this development is not set. It would be more accurate to describe it as a deferred popularity of smartphones. Brazilians love their mobile devices – they just started buying them later than Europeans for various reasons (lower grade of wealth years ago, tech-companies did not focus on Brazil, etc.).
In a huge country like Brazil a smartphone penetration between 40% and 50% – in the US the smartphone penetration in 2020 is at 84%. There is lots of growth potential in Brazil and with the usage of smartphones the growth of social media penetration goes often in line.
2) Brazilians love social media platforms
To get to this it’s important to understand the culture of South America and particularly Brazil. Brazilians are collectivists, they love to be around their friends and families and the independence of an individual is much less valued than for example in Germany or regions in Scandinavia. From this perspective, Brazil would be closer to many Asian countries, like India or China, than it is to European communities.
What makes this even more special is Brazil’s attitude towards anything related to fun, Brazilians are emotional, bold, and love to have a good time. This tendency to indulge makes Brazil very unique and it differs highly from Asian countries. The need to connect with people and the impulse to express emotions and to share feeling is the perfect combination to build up a vibrant community on social media platforms.
This community goes now all over Brazil and is worth 104M people, in other words: every second Brazilian is on social media, every third uses Instagram at least once per month. But the usage of social media is not limited to Instagram, for the Chinese brand TikTok Brazil is one of the key markets and for Kwai – a video platform similar to TikTok, but mostly unknown in Europe – Brazil is the key market worldwide.
In the graphic above the high share of Instagram users compared to overall social media users is displayed. It needs to be said that Brazilians are using various platforms at the same time, Instagram is the most popular medium where following influencers. But Brazil has tens of millions users on Facebook, YouTube and TikTok as well.
“Brazil is a very important market for us.”
Rodrigo Barbosa, Community Manager of TikTok LATAM
The affinity of Brazilians to social media can be seen on the case of TikTok, too. In December 2019 TikTok was downloaded 4.99M times in Brazil, in January 2020 the number grew up to 10.9M downloads per month.
This equals to a MOM increase of >100%. In total Brazil plays a very important role in the strategy of TikTok, with a total share of 10.4% of TikTok’s all-time downloads worldwide Brazil leads the company’s stake in South America and is one of the key regions outside of Asia.
3) Ecommerce is just in the growth stage in Brazil
Ecommerce is booming in Brazil like no other industry. From 2017 to 2019 the ecommerce retail value increased 25.5%. To set this in context, the overall GDP of Brazil did increased 6.8% during the same time frame. According to Statista’s forecast the total turnover for ecommerce in Brazil will be doubled within only eight years.
The Brazilians are still less used to ecommerce than the Americans or Canadians, but it is only a matter of time until Brazil is at the stage in which developed countries are right now. Companies should take this as a chance to take on learnings from Europe and the US to build up a market share in Brazil’s fast growing digital world.
Brazil’s growth influencer marketing is based on three blocks, all combined equal to an enormous potential in Brazil, as the country has the technology, social media savvy people and the economic requirements to become one of the key players in the eCommerce of the 2020s. Contact Bold Creators Club to discover how to launch your influencer marketing campaign in Brazil.