Brazil: Master of His Market

Many a Madison Avenue man would be driven to five-martini lunches by the demands and problems of advertising in Brazil. Of the country’s 76 million people, 50% are illiterate and, besides, too poor to buy mass magazines. There is no national television, radio or newspaper. Inflation is so rampant that prices sometimes change overnight. All these handicaps have proved, however, to be advantages for a fast-moving Brazilian named Cicero Leuenroth, who has built his Standard Propaganda into Brazil’s largest advertising agency by combining Madison Avenue drive and efficiency with a deep understanding of the special needs of Brazil’s consumers.

The grandson of an immigrant Ger man, the greying, nattily dressed Leuenroth, 57, has become such a master of his market that competing corporations willingly share his services-a practice universally avoided in the U.S. Standard’s 62 clients include two appliance companies, two steel mills and three drug companies, in addition to such prestigious firms as Shell, Pirelli and Helena Rubinstein. Last week Standard went to work on two more major plums: a government campaign to popularize a new anti-inflation, salary-withholding bond, and another to promote the National Housing Bank, recently organized to finance lower-class housing.

Saints & Sexpots. Situated in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the agency and its 300 employees shrewdly tailor advertising to two markets. Brazil’s richest consumers are in the “Golden Triangle” that stretches from Rio and São Paulo to Belo Horizonte. To stir them, Standard turns out sophisticated pitches that any Manhattan agency would proudly claim. For Rhodia fabrics, Leuenroth photographed Brazilian models wearing Rhodia clothes in Rome and Tokyo to convince women that Brazilian-made rayons and cottons are as smart as imports. In a nation where saints and sexpots remain the surest advertising approach at any level, Standard hoisted the Barki clothing company’s sales with pictures of luscious girls wearing only Barki men’s trousers or neckties.

In the isolated back country, Standard takes a different approach. “They don’t know how to read and write,” says Leuenroth. “But they know how to talk and listen.” Standard sells Alka-Seltzer in the back country with simple commercials blared from 250-watt radio stations or where there is no radio, over loudspeakers set up in village squares. In towns so remote that they lack electricity, Standard stencils brand names on walls or uses airplanes to drop advertising leaflets wrapped around candy. It also uses simple cartoons with as little wording as possible.

Beggars & Admen. Leuenroth learned advertising from his father, Eugenio, who opened an agency 52 years ago when, he says, businessmen commonly hung out such signs as: “Beggars and advertising men seen only on Wednesday.” Eugenio Leuenroth’s first “campaign” was a three-inch newspaper display for SKF ball bearings, but by 1923 he had signed some overseas giants, including Ford. Cicero joined the business after graduating from Columbia University (’25), now runs it with the advisory help of his 80-year-old father, who still visits the office daily. With business bustling, Cicero has branched into philanthropy, recently organized a “free enterprise commission” that is designed to help small businessmen open shops. “The advertising man,” he explains, “must think of his responsibility to the people.” And, of course, it will not hurt if some of those small businessmen grow up to be big advertisers.