Brazil is experiencing some revolutionary times, and it’s no coincidence that it is happening alongside the World Cup. The Brazilian passion for football is long known and the subject, especially when comes to the Seleção, is a matter of public knowledge and interest like nothing else.
The story starts right after Brazil’s victory against Ivory Coast, during the post-match interviews, when coach Dunga exploded in rage against a journalist from Globo Television.
But it is important here to understand the history of Globo in Brazil. The network has had a near monopoly in the Brazilian media for more than 40 years and has provenly influenced the country’s political history with partial journalism, according to its own interests, manipulating the audience of a country that already deals with deep educational problems.
Globo reacted the way it has (successfully) done in the past, changing their content according to their own particular views, paving their TV channel, newspapers, websites and magazines with criticism against Dunga, peaking with a text read by the journalist Tadeu Schmidt on Fantástico. The text read that
“(…) The coach Dunga presents a behaviour that is incompatible with the position it has in the command of the Seleção. But what needs to be clear in this episode is that we heavily root for the success of the team, and that the preoccupation of Globo Network’s journalism have always been of bringing the best information to you spectator, regardless of whoever is in command.”
This time however, something entirely different happened, and I believe it was that very last phrase the one which has ticked off Brazilians all over the country. Almost simultaneously to the end of Schmidts’s statement, a massive campaign entitled “Cala boca Tadeu Schmidt” (Shut up Tadeu Schmidt) exploded on Twitter, Orkut, Facebook and YouTube.
The speed with which the manifestations spread leads us to believe that it was not even a cascade of opinion (Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer and Welchs, 1998), but that millions of people had the same feeling at the same time and, thanks to Social Networking, were able to share it with each other, transforming it in a collective upbring in favour of their coach and against Globo that took enormous proportions online and offline, on Social and Traditional media, in Brazil and abroad.
Globo, scared of the unprecedented bad publicity generated against them, backed down and stopped/erased every bit of criticism against the coach. On the following game, after one of the commentators started to over-criticize Dunga, the head commentator immediately told him, on the air, to “change the subject now.”
What is clear for anyone who understands marketing and consumer behaviour is that the public today has every means possible to unveil the information and find out about the real truth of any matter. It has become impossible to fool or mislead people and, most importantly, when they find out, consumers have all the tools necessary to share and publicly destroy any brand that will try to do it.
If you take in consideration the life story of Dunga, a notably hard working sportsman who not only has captained Brazil’s World Cup victory of 1994 but has been doing a great job in coaching the actual team, and the shady history of Globo’s journalism, it was not hard for the public to make the decision of whom to support.
What’s fantastic here is the vanguard ability and inclination of the Brazilians to socialize and make use of technology tools to collectively raise towards what they think it is not right. It is no short of a real and unprecedented revolution, and I am very hopeful that the incident will landmark a new time of critical thinking against injustice and positive change to a country in desperate need of fundamental social improvement. And it makes perfect sense that it has football involved in it.
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