Doing marketing in Latin America: a perspective on professional services firms today
This pandemic, seen from the bright side (if that’s been at all possible), has forced individuals and companies to innovate, step out of comfort zones, reinvent and deploy resilience in order to survive. PwC Mexico’s Javier Martinez Schjetnan takes stock for the Latin America region.
Javier Martinez Schjetnan,
Regional Marketing and Business Development Consultant,
PwC Mexico
javierjmartinezs@gmail.com
When we look back on this past 20 years, we’ll see that companies took away interesting learnings, current business models were analysed in depth and in most of the cases, suspended. Estimated projections were no longer valid and had to be cut drastically. Instability, volatility, uncertainty had become the norm.
The new conditions required drastic measures and financial sacrifices. How to cut costs was the only important activity for a while. That meant, in the minds of many leaders, marketing had to be sacrificed.
Businesses suffered greatly in many of the industries, a situation that is still true across the globe, but the way it hit developing markets was even more harsh. The need to change and adapt was imperative. The only thing that these economies, particularly Latin America, had as an advantage was - that for better or worse - crises are common, repetitive, cyclical.
There was a need to step outside the comfort zone given that the buying process for products and services changed drastically. In undeveloped Latin America, companies had to invest and adopt technologies that they did not have before. So, the need should have been inverse, leaders must push for better, more sophisticated marketing to renew and thrive.
Latin American outlook
Latin America, as a region, mistakenly tends to be considered as relatively homogeneous markets. There is this assumption that doing marketing in Latin America is quite simple since most of the countries speak Spanish. Far from true.
Brazil, for instance, is a continent in itself of almost 200 million people and fifth largest country in the world. They speak Portuguese, have a quite sophisticated financial system and tremendous companies that have conquered the world.
All European countries excluding Russia fit in Brazil’s territory. Brazil is tremendously diverse, once considered the most prolific country in the region, now struggling greatly with poor economic performance and a controversial president and hit hard by the pandemic.
Mexico is another case. Spanish speaking and so close to the US that it depends tremendously on its economic powerhouse of a neighbour. Eighty-five per cent of what is produced in Mexico is sold in that country. Sometimes not considered Latin America because it is in the north, Mexico is one of those countries where the economy, which was already weak before the pandemic, plummeted.
This country does not turn very often to the South. Second largest economy in the region with 120 million people, 23 European countries can fit in Mexico.
Brazil and Mexico compete against each other as the country in Latin America that attracts the most foreign direct investment into the region, battle being won more now by the first. But these two countries have very advanced marketing.
The largest professional services firms in the world have large operations in these two economies. Competition is fierce between the Big 4, where they have bought smaller firms to win more market share. The legal industry is quite different.
“Latin America, as a region, mistakenly tends to be considered as relatively homogeneous markets. There is this assumption that doing marketing in Latin America is quite simple since most of the countries speak Spanish. Far from true.”
Global law firms are impeded to practice Brazilian law and therefore work under the basis of associations whilst in Mexico, all international law firms practice with their global names and compete against well-established local firms. Marketing is therefore quite different.
Marketing campaigns that come from global or Americas headquarters, although they always have to be tailored to speak to the local audiences, can be implemented with relative ease in the accounting industry. In the legal sector that is more complicated, less straightforward and quite local in essence.
Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Perú are four countries that speak Spanish, although with interesting differences in accents and word meanings. With populations of 45, 50, 19 and 33 million people respectively, these markets are working hard to attract investments.
Argentina tends to be more complicated for foreign companies but has an incredible number of talented professionals with some of the best creative people in the world. Colombia, which by the way, is extremely annoyed when people write it as Columbia (there is a marketing campaign about it!), is a steady economy with clear growth opportunities and super nice, hard-working people.
Chile is quite small but has been historically the most stable economy in the region, with clear rules for investment and a flourishing business environment. Peru has been dealing with complicated political situations lately but achieved excellent economic performances right before the pandemic. High caliber professionals and extraordinary food.
Similar to Mexico, accounting and legal services are delivered both by global firms and local ones in the three countries above, and very much the same in others like Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay. But product and service preferences in these countries vary greatly so marketing campaigns have to be adapted if coming from abroad or be very specific to the prevailing business opportunity.
At the end, of course, professional services are bought by people. Marketing campaigns are directed to decision makers inside the corporations. Marketing in today’s reality changed not only for products or more general services. Partners and practitioners within the firms have to adapt to expand their expertise areas and deliver business solutions and not anymore only a very specific accounting or legal service.
Doing marketing in Latin America under these circumstances was severely impacted and has modernised. Unlike many developed countries, marketers in this part of the world are more generalists and tend to cover more ground than in larger organizations based in advanced markets. There is also an innate culture of adaptability, constant changes, last minute deadlines and limited budgets. Working under these particular situations builds resilient profiles.
Clients are more demanding, looking for more value added, carefully analysing their buying process and service providers. Marketing departments are conscious of such situations and are speaking with full awareness of the complexities. Digital, social media and automation are, of course, part of the strategy in the region, the larger the firm, the more they spend time and effort in these channels.
Latin America is a diverse region but has definite common traits. Passion is a characteristic across all countries with tremendous professionals that inspire great respect, not to mention many business and cultural opportunities.
Despite the difficulties of the past 20 months – and the ongoing uncertainties – I, for one, am proud to be a Latin American.