Pescador no Brasil

Pimps and Prostitutes

Last Thursday one of the largest agency's in Recife, Ampla, invited me to come and talk to them. After fattening me up with an all your can eat sushi, very nice, they asked me to talk to them about Wieden + Kennedy. They then invited me to a Pimps and Prostitutes party on the Saturday.

These guys really know how to party and I had an amazing time. Backed by the fact that my glass was never empty. The only disturbing thing was the condoms that were hanging from the washing line!!

 

 

Ivan (TIE) and his wife Carol who works at Ampla

 

Manuel (the guy in the middle) threw the party to celebrate his birthday.

 

Nice pants.

It was a great party and thank you to anyone who spent the time listening to my drunken Portuguese attempts at civilized conversation.

Brasilia Teimosa by Bike

I went for my last bike ride to see all the villages in Brasilia Teimosa on Saturday. It really is an amazing place. I love it. My guides for the ride were Henrique and Henry. Henry shouted the whole way round.

 

 

"Hi-no, voce gosto bollo?"

When I arrived in Brazil 4 weeks ago I was looking forward to experiencing as many different things as possible. This includes food. I have tried to taste as many new things as possible and have eaten some quite strange things – from chickens heart, to pigs trotters, to oddly named fruits from the Amazon, to bananas with cheese and ice-cream to stew made with fish heads. There is one thing however that has been offered (and eaten) time and time again. If I am being honest, most days actually.

One thing that I will definitely take away with me, besides a large belly, is the knowledge that Brazilian people love bollo (cake).

The Final Event

Yesterday we held the launch event for the Solidarity Kitchen. It went really well. The kitchen was promoted with the helping hand of the theatre group at GTP+. A mixture of drag, Charlie Chaplin and clown lookalikes roamed the streets giving out free Caldinho and handing out flyer's.

Two television crews turned up to film the event for the local news. A government representative came along to show his support and the HIV and AIDS health minister for the state of Pernambuco also popped by.

 

 

 

Loads and loads of people came and tried the Caldinho and we also had a load of people come for lunch. On a normal Friday in the Solidarity Kitchen 11-15 people would come and pay for lunch. Yesterday over 60 paying customers came and ate at the Solidarity Kitchen.

It was great to see the launch after a month of hard work. There is still a lot of work to do and it will be really interesting to see if the kitchen can continue to attract people over the next 12 months. We have done loads to ensure that people will not forget the kitchen in a hurry.

What better way to celebrate than with one of Sergio and Diavila’s homemade cakes.

 

Let's go ride a bike

One thing I have noticed since I have been in Brazil is how much people love bikes and how many functions they have.

There are men who play ads whilst riding around the streets. For the grand cost of £1 an hour you can get you message played out all over the city.

 

There are the couples who like to travel together. In some style. Some make it look easier than others.

 

 

 

 

 

The are the kids who want to go everywhere with the grown ups.

meat sweats.

Last night Henrique and  Patricia took me for for a traditional Brazilian Rodizio. This basically entails eating meat, meat and more meat. Waiters come up to you table with different cuts of different animals on skewers and carve you a slice or three.

At one point I had five different animals on my plate.

It was incredible, really tasty. It did however trigger some pretty hefty meat sweats.

What I loved about this restaurant was that they really seemed to know their customer. Listerine and dental floss was on tap in the toilets.

 

Cultural Stereotyping

Apparently there was a report on the TV channel Global here in Recife today. It talked about how people view Brazil as a country. What stereotypes they have and how this is usually far removed from the realities. The show asked a load of foreign journalists questions about what they thought about Brazil before they got here. The top two answers were football and beautiful naked women.

Having been here for nearly a month I thought I would share a couple of things that I have seen whilst out and about. I thought they might be relevant in giving you the wider picture of Brazil.

 

Launching the Kitchen

We had our final creative presentation yesterday with Wladimir and Fabio from GTP+. We presented all our creative work and also our plan to launch the event this Friday. The guys seemed to be really excited and really happy which makes three weeks of hard work feel really worthwhile.

The main thing now is making sure we have everything ready for the launch event on Friday. It should be really good fun, we have all of GTP+ getting involved to make some noise about the kitchen. We have the theatre group who will be dressing as Mrs Santa (it is worth pointing out that they are all men and famous for their drag queen acts) and handing out flyers, caldinho (like a soupy broth - very tasty), fresh juice and cake.

A lot to do before then but it will be a great way to finish the 4 week project.

 

Me, Wladimir and Philippa.

Porto De Galinhas

I went to Porto De Galinhas this weekend. It translates to ‘Chicken Port’. It used to be used as a place for slave traders and people smugglers who would claimed to be importing chickens from Angola. The town has references to the ´galinhas`(chickens) everywhere.

       

Anyway, chickens aside, it was beautiful. Mile upon mile of sandy beaches, beach traders selling grilled cheese, coco-nut water, meat on a stick, oysters, shrimp and beer.

 

It also seems that beer’o’clock is anytime of the day when you are on the beach. Time doesn´t seem to come into it, being on the beach equals drinking beer. It´s hard to argue. I saw, what I think was the first beer of the day being opened at 7.30am. 

I also watched the sun rise from my hammock yesterday morning.  

Palestra (presentation)

On Thursday I gave a talk about W+K to the university and strangely some people from the local ad agencies that had heard someone from W+K was talking. I’m not sure whether they were expecting Dan Wieden or Tony Davidson, instead they got me.

I was quite surprised to see so many people in the audience (I think it was something to with a post that went around on their blog).  

 

Just what you need when you are attempting your first ever piece of public speaking in Portuguese. Even though I only did the first 4 slides in Portuguese it was still quite tough.

 

 

Thankfully Andrea (my who runs INATA) translated the rest of the presentation. I got the feeling I probably sounded like the equivalent of a Japanese tourist in London but was assured it wasn’t like that.

 

There were lots of people who looked interested along with a few questions. I only spotted one person asleep and only offended one other when talking about W+K’s stance on research. You can’t please everyone. Showing the Nike Joga Bonito work livened everyone up though.

 

As I was leaving one lady from a local agency stopped me and said: “we are launching a car for Fiat in 3 months, it is kind of like the Civic, but cheaper. Do you have an idea for the campaign?” Answers on a postcard please.