Photo Credit: Reinaldo Marques/Terra

During his last week in South Africa, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attended numerous events promoting my home country. Lula is a great character and one of the most charismatic personalities that Brazil will ever have in the presidential seat at Palácio do Planalto. However, Lula is also known for not following scripts and speaking his mind during public announcements. Every time that I try to imagine my worst PR nightmare, an event where I need to manage Mr. Lula da Silva always comes to mind.

During the release of Tourism Brazil’s (Embratur) marketing campaign last week in Johannesburg, Lula went on and on in a  last minute speech that managed to contradict much of the soon to be unveiled program. After announcing that he would not follow any script prepared by his communications specialists, Lula proceeded with his own off-the-cuff version which included a number of unfavourable stereotypes in his narrative. In an attempt to convince his audience that Brazil is a multicultural country, he goes against the highlight of Embratur’s campaign, a promotional video entitled “Brazil is Calling You – Celebrate Life Here.”

Produced by Fernando Meirelles‘ O2 Filmes, “Brazil is Calling You – Celebrate Life Here” portrays a country that I barely know as a person born and raised in Brazil. Apparently, Brazil’s president was equally unaware of the video’s content as the majority of his speech was based on describing his people as multicultural; a mix between first nations, afro-Brazilians and Europeans. I don’t know about you, but I can count on one hand the scenes starring non-Caucasian people in the video.

For years, Brazil has been trying to avoid the image of an unprofessional country with small urban centres surrounded by jungle.  Embratur’s promotional video addresses this need, however, Lula said that the tourists who decide to visit Brazil in 2014 should also be careful while exploring the Amazon because if they take the wrong shortcut, they might get swallowed by a sucuri. It was an unsuccessful attempt to joke about Brazilian natural diversity.

So how did Embratur deal with the international backlash? Thankfully, the President’s speech was delivered entirely in Portuguese, so the majority of the reaction to Lula’s unscripted speech ended up coming from the Brazilian media and expats who saw a very pretentious president on stage.

How would I handle this situation? Well… once your representative is on stage, it’s virtually impossible to drag them away from the microphone (remember Kayne West?). However, as a communications professional, I would create an opportunity during the same event to address the international media and explain my spokesperson’s jokes. I would also recommend that Lula take a more serious approach while clarifying his message in his next press conference in Johannesburg.

What about you?

This article was written based on information provided by the following Brazilian articles:

Lula comete gafes futebolísticas em discurso sobre a Copa de 2014

Com gafes, Lula faz público gargalhar durante discurso

Discurso de Lula diverte a plateia na África do Sul

Can Your Spokesperson Ruin a Marketing Campaign? is a post from: MadameHeringer.com