Brazilians consume an enormous amount of American culture, including TV shows, movies, and music, but many of them rely on subtitles and dubbing to understand it. English has become the fashionable language to learn and use, but only a minority speak it completely fluently. Brazilians accept the fact (or at least realize) that Americans do not speak Portuguese and anything they get from the States will be relatively Greek to them before it gets translated.
So when I was sitting in my living room and first heard Donald Trump start barking in Portuguese, I sat up in my chair and my jaw dropped.
As a reality show junkie, I watch a lot of People & Arts, a channel with mostly American TV shows. What I've noticed about this channel that sets it apart from other channels that broadcast foreign shows, or foreign-based channels, is that the internal advertising has begun using Portuguese by asking the American stars to speak directly to Brazilians. In a commercial for Celebrity Apprentice, Donald Trump refers to the show using its Portuguese name (O Aprendiz), and says "you're fired" in English, Spanish in Portuguese [Voh say ess ta deh meh tido!]. In another, the male trainer from "The Biggest Loser" introduces the show in Portuguese (Perder para ganhar), and starts out by saying "Oi Brasil!"
To me, it makes all the difference in the world.
Take this in contrast with channels like HBO, which despite the fact that it has Brazilian shows, in Portuguese, often does most of its internal advertising entirely in Spanish, which pisses me off to no end. Clearly, channels like this have a Latin America division, rather than totally separate Spanish Latin America and Portuguese Latin America divisions. They try to save money by creating a single set of ads to distribute throughout the continent, instead of making separate ads for Brazil. This, to me, is extremely insulting, since Brazilians obviously do not speak Spanish and frequently get miffed if they are expected to understand it. It is also typical of Americans to lump all Latin Americans together into a single ethnic and language group, a concept which Brazilians don't exactly look kindly upon. As such, I think HBO-style advertising is lazy and in my opinion, counterintuitive.
I'd like to offer People & Arts' advertising as a lesson to all foreign investors and businesses in Brazil. Brazilians may have an odd obsession with English, and some of them may very well understand it, but they will sit up and listen if you make an effort to speak their language (even if you don't do it very well). It makes a huge difference.
