Asian brands gain ground in Brazil with new marketing playbook

A focus on product innovation, heavy investment in advertising, and playful marketing campaigns are among the cultural characteristics of East Asian companies helping them win over Brazilian consumers in sectors such as cosmetics, automobiles, beverages, and services.

The growing influence of East Asia also represents a business opportunity for Brazilian brands, according to a study titled “Asia in Motion,” presented on Thursday (12) at Conexão CMO, an event organized by Globo and Valor for marketing executives. “This trend has significant influence on the advertising market,” said Eliseu Barreira, Globo’s director of strategy and business intelligence, at the event. “The arrival of these new competitors, with different approaches to innovation, positioning, and communication, is also changing competitive dynamics and creating new benchmarks for companies from all backgrounds,” he added. Over the past 12 months, Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean companies spent R$3.2 billion on advertising in Brazil, a 16% increase from the previous year, Barreira noted.

Making products tangible, rather than simply promoting an idea or concept, is one of the distinctive features of East Asian brands’ advertising campaigns compared with those of Western companies, said Bruno Pompeu, a professor at the University of São Paulo’s School of Communications and Arts (ECA-USP) and coordinator of Casa Semio.

“Asian brands always keep the product at the center. You could talk only about a technological innovation, but it is important to remember that the product itself exists in the real world. That is something entirely new for people who were almost imagining that consumption was becoming dematerialized,” Pompeu said while presenting the study.

Another notable feature is the media strategy adopted by Asian cosmetics brands. “We found that they have built their audiences on social media, but they continue to invest heavily in points of sale, brand activation and what are traditionally considered conventional media,” the professor said. “They have a much more sophisticated understanding of how different media channels work together than we sometimes see here.”

Brazil is among the world’s 10 largest consumers of South Korean cosmetics. Brazilian imports of personal care, perfumery, and cosmetics products from South Korea nearly tripled in three years, reaching $34.6 million in 2025, according to the Brazilian Association of the Personal Hygiene, Perfumery, and Cosmetics Industry (Abihpec).

South Korean K-pop is a prominent example of how culture and consumption can be integrated, gaining widespread popularity in Brazil, as have Asian television dramas, commonly known as doramas. The Japanese adaptation of the word “drama” was added to the Portuguese-language dictionary in 2023.

The production values of East Asian television dramas have helped popularize the format, said journalist, author, and TV Globo special correspondent Sônia Bridi during a panel discussion at the event. Investments in culture and education in South Korea and China are examples of the pragmatic approach adopted by those countries’ governments, she said.

“South Korea invested in K-pop and K-drama production in the same way a country invests in a strategic industry such as oil production or the manufacturing of phones and televisions. In other words, there is a government-led strategy to project the country’s image abroad,” the journalist and documentary filmmaker said.

Bridi lived in Beijing for two years, from 2005 to 2006, where she and her husband, cinematographer Paulo Zero, established TV Globo’s first bureau in Asia. She recounted the experience in her 2008 book, “Laowai: Histórias de uma repórter brasileira na China” [literally, stories of a Brazilian reporter in China].

China’s innovation process initially involved copying products, but the country has since evolved, Bridi noted. She recalled deciding to buy a pickup truck from a Chinese brand that at the time was imitating a Western model. When a problem arose involving the jack mounting point, the company fixed it with a block of wood. “It was a great lesson for me—not about China’s backwardness, but about the Chinese ability to find solutions to problems,” the journalist said.

“Today I drive a fully electric car packed with technology, made by the same brand I bought from in China. I think that anecdote shows how, in 20 years, a company can go from imitating another brand, and not even doing a very good job of it, to becoming an innovative global brand,” Bridi said.

Collectivism is also a strong feature of East Asian cultures, including in education. Having followed the development of Chinese universities and their partnerships with American and European institutions, the documentary filmmaker noted that the choice of university major is also part of the government’s planning in China. “They have a lot of influence over what you study. It is not about what you want to be in life, but what the country needs,” she said. “Chinese leaders, for example, tend to come from polytechnic universities, while Western leaders are more likely to have studied law.”

A strong commitment to consumers is another important aspect of Chinese business culture. “In China, when you become someone’s customer, you become a friend, and they have an obligation to help you with any problem you may have,” Bridi said. The expansion of Chinese automakers in Brazil was also highlighted in the analysis of East Asian brands. Pompeu cited a BYD campaign that brought together 30 critics of the brand to test a new vehicle, borrowing the format of a public grilling that has become popular on social media. “They brought in 30 people who said they hated the brand and created a radio ad saying: ‘If you’re a BYD hater, watch out, because the new car is going to win you over,’” the professor said. “In the West, you don’t address your future customers as people who hate you. That is not the only way to approach consumers, but it suggests building a more candid relationship with them,” he said.

From January through October, Chinese brands accounted for 19.12% of passenger car and light commercial vehicle sales in Brazil, according to data from the National Federation of Motor Vehicle Distribution (Fenabrave).

(Bianca Guilherme contributed to this report)

*By Daniela Braun — São Paulo

Source: Valoar International

https://valorinternational.globo.com/