Brazil’s country branding has a long history of failure

Last month, the Brazilian tourism board (Embratur) unveiled its new branding campaign to attract foreign tourists to the country. “Brazil, visit and love us” became an instant case study of bad marketing—ranging from the unauthorized use of a font created by a French designer, to a shocking translation which turned the slogan into a sexual innuendo it wouldn’t carry in Portuguese.

This time around, Embratur decided to break with the tradition of writing the country’s name in its original, Portuguese spelling: Brasil. For experts—and voters alike—that is a problem and a disrespect to national symbols.

Former publicist Ricardo Freire wrote a long piece on his website explaining some of the main mistakes of the new Embratur branding. “The new ‘Brazil’ country branding campaign is an embarrassment to Brazilian design. It was proudly announced as having been made internally, in a short time, saving public money. All these qualities are apparent in the result: it is amateur, unfinished and poor,” he said.