[Mr.GM]

Leon Panetta and US Gov officials working together with Brazilian lawmakers and military:

http://www.defesanet.com.br/br_usa/notic...ooperation

http://g1.globo.com/economia/noticia/201...e-eua.html

The rise of NRA-like groups in Brazil to push for more lax gun laws:

http://www.mvb.org.br/


Supreme Court passing the Brazilian version of the "Affirmative act" this week :
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacion...ties.shtml

PLUS Roosh's post http://www.rooshv.com/the-brazilian-gove...-censor-me

This is serious.Seeing that Brazilian officials are trusting organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center shows where we are heading as a society.

Stand-up comedians are being arrested and censored here as well (google Rafinha Bastos). Obesity increasing.

I wonder if it is too late to prevent the country from going down the police state route.

It's good that Brazil's economy is getting better, and that we have democracy and freedom ,but I don't think that we should lose what makes our society great and different from the West.

Obviously we don't want a society that is unfair with women and people of a x race , but overreaching Political Correctness is not the way to go.

[Roosh]

Is there any resistance from Brazilians about these changes or are they readily accepting it?

[Keyser Söze]

(04-30-2012 10:33 PM)Mr.GM Wrote:  

Leon Panetta and US Gov officials working together with Brazilian lawmakers and military:

http://www.defesanet.com.br/br_usa/notic...ooperation

http://g1.globo.com/economia/noticia/201...e-eua.html

The rise of NRA-like groups in Brazil to push for more lax gun laws:

http://www.mvb.org.br/


Supreme Court passing the Brazilian version of the "Affirmative act" this week :
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacion...ties.shtml

PLUS Roosh's post http://www.rooshv.com/the-brazilian-gove...-censor-me

This is serious.Seeing that Brazilian officials are trusting organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center shows where we are heading as a society.

Stand-up comedians are being arrested and censored here as well (google Rafinha Bastos). Obesity increasing.

I wonder if it is too late to prevent the country from going down the police state route.

It's good that Brazil's economy is getting better, and that we have democracy and freedom ,but I don't think that we should lose what makes our society great and different from the West.

Obviously we don't want a society that is unfair with women and people of a x race , but overreaching Political Correctness is not the way to go.

I think your perspective may not be completely clear.

I really don't see how things are any different than they have been for decades.

The only reason the US has sent Panetta down there is because the USA wants to sell military equipment and Brazil has the oil money to pay for it. This isn't new.

As for affirmative action, well, you guys bought that on yourselves. White Brazilians, especially the wealthy, are totally full of shit when it comes to race. They claim that they are not like the USA and there is no big racial problem in Brazil. Of course, Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to eliminate slavery in 1888. Since then, Brazil has become one of the most divided societies in the world, with an exceptionally high Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality and the gap between upper, middle, and lower classes). For all intents and purposes, blacks are born into a lower caste they cannot escape, and live in "favelas" = ghettos, that can have hundreds of thousands of residents and no public services.

Also, the white elite has rigged the system so that the universities, which are funded with public money, have admissions requirements that effectively eliminate almost all blacks, as they have been subjected to a terrible public elementary and secondary education system, and can't compete with white applicants who have been educated in private schools.

Also, gun control???? Hahahahahha. That is just a game. In Brazil, the law doesn't apply to the wealthy at all. And the criminals in favelas carry military grade automatic weapons. Also, there are mafias that consist of active duty police officers who murder and steal with total impunity. Even if Brazil made a law against firearms, it has no ability to effectively enforce it. And no one ends up in jail unless you are poor and black, so really no one in power gives a fuck.

[Keyser Söze]

[Roosh]

Quote:

I really don't see how things are any different than they have been for decades.

Stop trolling. You're hitting both the forum and blog with this nonsense. This is in addition to your race trolling.

[Switchez]

Shit is Brazil really going that way?
Never been to either country, but please don't let it happen.

[Mr.GM]

I'm not against the affirmative act. I totally agree about what you (Kaiser) said about the elites in Brazil. But Brazil is a mixed country. Most people here are mixed. It's hard to tell if someone is black or white sometimes. What is considered white here is not the same as in the US.

What this law does IMO is to institutionalize "race awareness" in Brazil , a phenomenon that is not yet assimilated in Brazilian society.

People in general don't think much about race as they do in the US. I never had to think if I'm a "White Hispanic" or a "Caucasian". This ruling changes that.
It's not necessarily a bad thing , since Brazil is indeed racist , but what about white and brown guys who live in slums ?
Wouldn't be better to have quotas for low income people instead of racial quotas ? That's the million dollar question .

The question here is about the direction of the country. Answering to Roosh , There is resistance against the Political correctness movement (The Rafinha Bastos ban caused a lot of controversy here , for example) but the mainstream media is clearly pushing the changes forward.
The high approval ratings of the current government (centerleft - socialist) also contributes to the lack of questioning.

Gun Laws are restricted here , It's way harder for the average joe to buy a legal weapon here than in the US.
Again , my point is not to be pro or against gun ownership. I'm actually more pro than against.

But what I'm exposing here is that the pro-gun lobby and gun culture are rising
here in some segments of the society , and its clear inspiration is the American NRA and the 2nd amendment in the US constitution.

It's obvious that International gun-makers are seeing Brazil as a potential new market for civil gun ownership.

[kosko]

Have there been any trends at all in Afro-Brazilians gaining any type of economic clout?

I remember in SA during the end of White rule it did create a large Black African middle class - would this happen soon in Brazil?

[Mr.GM]

It's already happening in a way - since the majority of the people who emerged to the so called "new middle Class" (people who rose from Class "D" to Class "C" in Brazilian standards) are from black or brown ethnicity .

But I would say that Race awarenessmovements is still incipient , really different situation from the post-apartheid South Africa.

[Lief]

Brazilians will not resist these changes. I find many Brazilians to be massively insecure. Why else do they wear Hollister shirts or proudly parade their little alligator shirts?

Since they think the West is more advanced they will copy all of the crap including feminism, political correctness and fast food.

I've been disappointed in the changes to the Brazilian women over the last four years. These "booming" economy has made women think that paper pushing careers are more important than taking care of her man or looking good.

However, it is all relative. Brazil will go down the tubes, but the U.S. will degrade even further.

We must focus on tier 2 cities right now.

I encourage all young people to hop on a plane and see Rio before the Olympics turns it into a corporatized, family friendly Disney that will be a cross between Houston and Orlando.

[chochemonger1]

(05-05-2012 02:24 PM)Lief Wrote:  

Brazilians will not resist these changes. I find many Brazilians to be massively insecure. Why else do they wear Hollister shirts or proudly parade their little alligator shirts?

Since they think the West is more advanced they will copy all of the crap including feminism, political correctness and fast food.

I've been disappointed in the changes to the Brazilian women over the last four years. These "booming" economy has made women think that paper pushing careers are more important than taking care of her man or looking good.

However, it is all relative. Brazil will go down the tubes, but the U.S. will degrade even further.

We must focus on tier 2 cities right now.

I encourage all young people to hop on a plane and see Rio before the Olympics turns it into a corporatized, family friendly Disney that will be a cross between Houston and Orlando.

Yes, this is such a sad phenomenom. My uncle who passed away 10 yrs ago used to go to Rio (20 to 30 yrs ago) as much as he could and he was from Ecuador. He used to tell me that it was dirt cheap and the girls absolutely loved foreigners, even from another shit hole in South America. In those times Brazil was the most poorly run country in South America. Imagine that, coming from a 5 foot 7 dude from Ecuador who spoke very little portuguese. He just spoke in Spanish but his game was tight. Oh my....how things have changed.
By the way he had many pics of him with the girls he banged, so there is no reason for me not to believe him. He also made frequent trips to Cali, Colombia in those times. Wise man my uncle haha.

[Lumiere]

Daughter awarded US$ 110,000 for father’s emotional neglect- Brazilian Supreme Court

http://human-stupidity.com/stupid-dogma/...um=twitter

State sponsored theft getting popular in Brazil

[el mechanico]

One thing we are very good at here in the US is advertising. The Brazilians are no match for our corporate machine. You will accept TGI fridays and Chili's. You have no choice unless your Gov steps in and bans them. Pizza hut and KFC are becoming the national dish of the DR as we speak. You're next Brazil. You're going to probably get Home depot too to put all your small hardware places out of business and force the owners to work there for 5 bucks an hour. What's the name of that drink you guys love? Forget it. Applebees will trademark it and you wont be able to make it anyplace anymore. I think you guys are going to need some Wal-marts too. Right on the Amazon so the indigenous people have a place to buy clothes and better kayaks. They will have to get jobs there though to pay for the stuff.

Oh yeah I forgot Costco. Remember those Ketchup bottles you can hold with one hand? Huge waste of money. You need to start buying them in 2 liter sizes. You'd would be a fool not to.

[el mechanico]

Here's what starbucks learned about the Brazil market. You guys are unskilled at making coffee. Shame on you.


Business CultureImportLegalInvestmentTaxRelocation
E-mail
Facebook
RSS
Twitter
LinkedIn
The Brasil BusinessLogin|Register
Business CultureAll ArticlesEventsQ+A
28/09/10 - 17h50
4 Lessons to Learn from Starbucks in Brazil
Starbucks were entering the Brazilian market many years after other American franchise corporations like McDonald's and Pizza Hut, but what can we learn from them?


Image by marcopako
You might have already guessed that this article isn't going to be about coffee nor do I have any inside information from the Starbucks HQ. However, we will look at what your company can learn from this large foreign brand that entered the market over the last 4 years.
1. It's not too late
From time to time, you hear people saying that if you are thinking about entering the Brazilian market now, you are too late. They are wrong, and Starbucks have demonstrated this.
An American corporation trying to sell coffee to Brazilians is almost as ambitious as trying to sell sand in Sahara. However, Starbucks have managed to win a market segment that was not facilitated by the existing coffee franchises like Fran's and Ponto Caffe.
Starbucks announced their entrance in the Brazilian market on June 2006.
2. Study the Viability
Brazil is well known as the land of coffee but Brazilians do not love coffee. The coffee you normally buy in Brazilian coffee shops is normally of a low quality and poorly prepared by unskilled staff.
It is indeed possible to find a few good coffee shops with "export grade" coffee and where the barista and busboy are not the same person, but it's fair between them.
In Brazil, coffee is consumed more as a soft drink, while in other places of the world coffee is consumed as an aromatic experience more than a drink. The Brazilians way of drinking coffee fits well into Starbucks' highly milk and cream based product line.
3. Localize, Localize, Localize
We have been writing about localization before, in the article "Localizing your Software for Brazil". Starbucks have executed the localization excellently without changing the product's experience.
Starbucks have localized their traditional cappuccino with a "doce de leite" edition. Doce de leite is a traditional Brazilian cream made out of milk and sugar, not unlike caramel syrup.
The objective fact that the taste of caramel syrup and doce de leite is identical when you mix it in a cappuccino is irrelevant, what Starbucks understood was the marketing value of doce de leite. This is a cream that most Brazilian where eating as kids and with which they had a lifelong relation. By linking the famous Starbucks Cappuccino with a traditional product, they created a true local touch to their product.
Starbucks could have chosen to simply offer their cappuccino with caramel syrup in Brazil just like they serve it all around the world, after all the taste of cappuccino with caramel syrup and cappuccino with doce de leite is identical.
4. Select your Human Resource carefully
Close to all companies or business concepts that work abroad, it will work in Brazil as long as you hire the right people and accept to localize your offering. Sometimes foreign businesses understand better what's wrong with the current Brazilian offering than their local competitors.
Starbucks have managed to differentiate themselves from their competitors through hiring the right people.
Brazilians are warm people and their loyalty to individuals that are warm and friendly is remarkable. However, at most Brazilian coffee shop chains you will find staff that couldn't care less about being friendly, they see their job strictly as collecting money for filtering water trough coffee and the coffee shops have a high turnover rate on their staff.
Starbucks addressed this by hiring and training the friendliest staff from all the large coffee shop chains in Brazil. They are earning their investment in human reasoners back with the Brazilians loyalty to friendly service.

[Mr.GM]

Starbucks is profiting here because they were smart enough to know that Young Brazilians don't resist anything that resembles America.

the niche is small (because the prices are high an older folks don't like it) but it is the #1 hangout for rich upper middle class kids in SP.
They all want to be seem holding the Starbucks cup with their Hollisters and Abercrombies.

Wal-Mart for some reason is struggling here , Some say that it is because the stores are "too messy" for brazilian standards , but they already have a share of the market.

Outback and apleebess are already "The place" to go eat on weekends for middle class Paulistas (People from SP).

[kosko]

The saving grace for Brazil may be if America is started to be viewed in a negative light. Politically this may be so but it will be hard for that to develop on a cultural level.

Sao Paulo banned billboards from their city let's hope that a large City in Brazil realizes that American food just makes people lazy and fat and bans fast food also. Would this ever gain traction?

[Andy_B]

This seems to be a pretty hot topic here these days. Do you guys have any idea why Brazil is going down this route? Has there been a direct attempt by the U.S. to "work on" the country, or are the officials eager to please the west, as Roosh theorizes?

[WhoZis]

(05-06-2012 11:07 AM)kosko Wrote:  

The saving grace for Brazil may be if America is started to be viewed in a negative light. Politically this may be so but it will be hard for that to develop on a cultural level.

Sao Paulo banned billboards from their city let's hope that a large City in Brazil realizes that American food just makes people lazy and fat and bans fast food also. Would this ever gain traction?

Actually this would make a great public service ad campaign for Brazil - one bikini girl from Brazil, versus one from U.S.

[Pilgrim37]

(05-06-2012 11:16 AM)Andy_B Wrote:  

This seems to be a pretty hot topic here these days. Do you guys have any idea why Brazil is going down this route? Has there been a direct attempt by the U.S. to "work on" the country, or are the officials eager to please the west, as Roosh theorizes?

If they think they can make money and sell products and services in Brazil they will do!

[Pilgrim37]

Interesting Doc on how Africans became part of Brazil..spends a lot of time in Salvador,Bahia of course

[Ringo]

(05-06-2012 10:57 AM)Mr.GM Wrote:  

Starbucks is profiting here because they were smart enough to know that Young Brazilians don't resist anything that resembles America.

the niche is small (because the prices are high an older folks don't like it) but it is the #1 hangout for rich upper middle class kids in SP.
They all want to be seem holding the Starbucks cup with their Hollisters and Abercrombies.

This is right on.

It's all about the image... It's a sign of high status to walk around with your R$10,00 double-chocolate-vanilla-frappe-mocchaccino in a Starbucks glass with your name written on it. Just walk around in Av. Paulista and check it out.

Also, GM, let's not forget the escalating addiction to iPhones/Blackberry messaging. Fuck.