Brazil will lead in service and marketing innovation

Posted by By Mark Hillary at 14 February, at 11 : 57 AM Print

Recent research from social media research firm Semiocast shows that Brazilians are now second only to the USA in their use of the micro-blogging service Twitter.

The U.S. still top at the 1st place on Twitter in terms of accounts with 107.7 million accounts. Brazil is now the second country with 33.3 million accounts, surpassing Japan now third at 29.9 million.

Twitter adoption in Brazil seems even more remarkable when compared to India – a country with a billion more citizens than Brazil, but only a third of the Twitter accounts. But why is this significant anyway?

Tools like Twitter are not just providing opportunities for people to chat about the football results. Entire industries are changing because of the ways these tools are modifying human communication patterns and this is significant. For Brazil to be the largest global adopter of technologies like this – apart from the USA of course – means taking a lead in several other areas.

• Public Relations (PR) is no longer about relationships over lunch and managing press releases. Managing the relationship between a brand and the journalists and analysts who cover that company has gone online. The lunches have not entirely vanished, but connectivity using networks like Twitter has now become the most important way to nurture new relationships.
• Marketing is undergoing a similar shift. University courses in marketing from five years ago barely mentioned the opportunity to promote a brand using social networks. Now it is the most important channel being explored by consumer and business-to-business companies. Coca Cola may still be advertising on billboards, but consumer companies like Coke are shifting more and more resource into online campaigns that allow true consumer interaction.
• Customer service is required in some way by any company that sells anything. But the expectation of how customer service works has been entirely rocked by social media. Every company in every industry is changing the way they interact with clients because of Facebook and Twitter.

So the adoption of tools like Twitter should not be seen in isolation alone – it shows that in many knowledge-based industries Brazil is stepping up to lead the way globally.

Why are so many digital marketing firms lining up to enter Brazil from their bases in Europe and the US? Why are so many traditional PR agencies facing problems? Why are customer service firms in Brazil transforming their market? It is because of the Brazilian desire to adopt new tools and to innovate in these industries.

If you want to see where the next wave of customer service or marketing innovation is going to take place then just check out which countries have consumers that are adopting social tools at the rate it is happening in Brazil.

Photo by Brajeshwar Oinam licensed under Creative Commons

Comment Culture Social Media brasil, brazil, coca cola, customer service, digital marketing, india, japan, marketing, pr, public relations, research, semiocast, social media, social networking, top 20, twitter, usa