U.S.-based AdStar, a leading application service provider for the classified advertising industry, announced that it has entered into an international licensing agreement with Associados, one of Brazil’s largest media organizations. 

As part of the agreement, Associados has purchased the internationalization of AdStar’s platform into Portuguese, and will host AdStar’s XML Gateway Platform and market the technology to publishers throughout Brazil.

In addition to representing AdStar in Brazil, Associados will implement AdStar’s XML Gateway Platform as a key component of its own initiative to build the market-leading advertising and e-commerce system in Brazil.

AdStar’s Web-based technology will power ad transactions for Associados’ 12 newspapers, which include Correio Braziliense in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil; Estado de Minas in Belo Horizonte, the third largest city in Brazil; and O Diário de Pernambuco, the oldest newspaper in Latin America.

“We undertook an extensive search to find the elements necessary for a successful web presence, and we decided to use AdStar as the e-commerce engine for our advertising solution,” stated Geraldo Teixeira da Costa Neto, director of Internet services for Associados Group. 

“We were particularly impressed with AdStar’s ability to reverse publish our web ads back into print, which is of critical importance in Brazil.  AdStar’s XML Gateway Platform will be installed alongside vertical advertising solutions for automotive and real estate advertisements from Morris DigitalWorks, and its ability to handle complex integrations was key to our selection of AdStar’s technology.”

“Associados offers us a great opportunity to expand the deployment of our e-commerce platform outside of the United States into South America’s largest media market and the fifth largest country in the world,” said Leslie Bernhard, president and chief executive officer of AdStar. 

“Associados has an impressive media presence throughout Brazil, including the ownership of several ISPs, and is ideally positioned to serve as a regional host and marketing agent for our technology.

“The agreement demonstrates continued growth of Internet use in global newspaper markets, as well as interest from international publishers in integrating third-party Web applications using our AdStar e-commerce platform. 

“We look forward to working with Associados and their newspapers to enhance their advertising offerings with AdStar’s ad transaction technology and to market our business solutions to publishers throughout Brazil.”

AdStar’s technology allows advertisers to use the Internet to create, schedule and pay for their classified ads for publication in print and online versions of the newspapers through a single online transaction. 

AdStar manages the entire ad transaction, from formatting to payment processing, and offers several value-added services to help advertisers enhance their ads’ look, feel and reach.

Based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Associados is an 80 year-old media group with more than 4,600 employees that owns and operates 12 newspapers, seven television stations, 13 radio stations and three Internet Service Providers.

AdStar’s ad transaction infrastructure powers classified ad sales for more than 40 of the largest newspapers in the United States, the Newspaper Association of America’s bonafideclassifieds.com, CareerBuilder and a growing number of other online and print media companies. The company is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California.

AdStar – www.adstar.com

Associados – www.uai.com.br

Who are the geniuses who invented those superimposed covers full of advertisements and constantly scoff at what is most noble in newspapers and magazines? And what about those odd advertising formats in the middle pages of publications, killing all the information around them – which creativity laboratory produced them?

Could the advertisers themselves be the ones to blame for subverting the paradigms of due respect to the reader, that have existed for decades? Or is it the fault of the ad agencies who, acting on behalf of advertisers, take advantage of the crisis that left newspapers and magazines struggling to stay afloat, so they could compromise their dignity and impose the supremacy of paid copy? 

There are clients and clients, as well as agencies and agencies, ad executives and ad executives, media outlets and media outlets – it would be unfair to generalize. But we can’t ignore the overall picture – the printed media in Brazil have lost their composure. Very few are the companies who are able to resist the blackmailing practices of advertisers and agency owners.  

And none of the business groups, in this case ANJ (National Newspaper Association), ANER (National Association of Magazine Editors) or even Conar (National Council of Auto-Regulation in Advertising) has had the courage to complain about this dangerous disfigurement compromising the most fragile of media segments. With no corporate armor whatsoever, those who would like to resist are the ones who capitulate.

Today, advertising has become more important than even the most important piece of information. In the old days there was a sense of modesty, even when skeptics stated that the only place to find the press is in the back of the ads. Mockery and taunting are what we have now.   

The Biggest Adversary

All the headlines, the hierarchization of information, the search for visual impact and everything else that journalistic artistry has created during at least two centuries are carried downstream when a powerful advertiser decides to burn his inventory and resolves that his advertisement must superimpose the magazine cover or be placed on top of the front page of a newspaper, regardless of the news they may contain.

In the case of dailies, the executioners are the huge retail chains who seem impermeable, with rare and honorable exceptions, to the moral itchings of middle-size entrepreneurs.

Heavy duty retail businesses do not bother with dumping, disloyal competition or wrongful withholding of taxes – they actually use those practices to knock down the doors of the club of the largest advertisers in the country.

And the press, which should stop the abuse, not only accepts it but also becomes their beneficiary and accomplice.  

The new starlets of the advertising market (telephone service operators and cell phone manufacturers) are the last ones to join the anything-goes attitude: besides superimposed or fake covers in newspapers and magazines, they also corrode the inside pages by imposing advertising designs flagrantly prejudicial to the act of reading the information contained in them.  

To whom can readers, who pay for their issues, appeal in order to have information free of manipulations and tricks? The ombudsman of Folha de S. Paulo has complained and before him, this Observatório, but the discussion does not appear in the weeklies or in the pages of Meio & Mensagem.

And to whom journalism companies appeal when they finally resolve to invest in their media outlets? To the same marketplace, of course. Agencies and advertisers can’t hide their enthusiasm for the triviality press and that thing called “journalism light”.

The same market that demotes information as secondary in order to benefit advertisements hates international news, political commentary, interpretation copy and cultural journalism and l-o-v-e-s copy on behavior & manias, medicine & health pages, food & beverage sections, showbiz sections and, above all, columns with society news (in which the ad agency owners are frequent appearances).   

Who is the biggest adversary of the free press? 

After so many dictatorships and censorships, most people would tend to blame governments. Wrong: governments are defeated in elections. This so-called “market” remains standing and giving orders. 

Alberto Dines, the author, is a journalist, founder and researcher at LABJOR—Laboratório de Estudos Avançados em Jornalismo (Laboratory for Advanced Studies in Journalism) at UNICAMP (University of Campinas) and editor of the Observatório da Imprensa. He also writes a column on cultural issues for the Rio daily Jornal do Brasil. You can reach him by email at obsimp@ig.com.br.

Translated by Tereza Braga. Braga is a freelance Portuguese translator and interpreter based in Dallas. She is an accredited member of the American Translators Association. Contact: terezab@sbcglobal.net.

PJ Pereira, President of the of 2005 Cyber Lions jury for the Cannes International Advertising Festival, has joined AKQA as Executive Creative Director. PJ was formerly the Vice President and Creative Director of AgenciaClick, the largest Internet agency in Brazil. 

He has over 16 years of experience in the interactive marketing and advertising industry with 35 international awards in the past seven years including 13 Cyber Lions, a Cyber Lion Grand Prix, 8 One Show Pencils, 1 Grand Prix and 5 Golds at the London International Advertising Festival.

“PJ is the leading interactive creative director and agency entrepreneur from Latin America and we are thrilled that he will be joining AKQA’s creative team,” said Tom Bedecarre, CEO of AKQA.

“His extensive international experience and creative insight will be an enormous asset for our clients and inspiration to our team.”

“AKQA has gathered some of the best creative talent in the world and it is an honor to be part of this team,” said Pereira.

“With the current team in place, as well as the new talent we’ll hire, our goal is to create original, effective and memorable work.”

Pereira, a Brazilian native, is widely accepted in the global creative community as a visionary.

At AgenciaClick, he lead two different creative teams, headed by local creative directors and divided into design, online advertising and information architecture groups. 

His agency was twice recognized as Agency of the Year by iBest, Brazil’s most prominent interactive competition.

Three of the world’s brightest creative directors have joined AKQA in the past 90 days: Lars Bastholm from Framfab, Rei Inamoto from R/GA and PJ Pereira from AgenciaClick. 

Alongside Executive Creative Directors from AKQA’s London office, James Hilton and Daniel Bonner, these five will form the agency’s global creative council.

“2005 is going to be a breakout year for AKQA,” said Bedecarre. “We’re very eager to see the exciting work that PJ and Rei and Lars will develop for our clients.”

Pereira, who speaks Portuguese, English and Spanish, enjoys painting African tribal masks which have been internationally exhibited.

Amog AKQA’s clients we can mention: Nike, Visa, BMW, palmOne and Microsoft Xbox. Ranked in the top five interactive agencies by Advertising Age and twice recognized as the “Most Respected Agency” by New Media Age, AKQA has offices in San Francisco, Washington D.C., London and Singapore.

AKQA
www.akqa.com

PRNewswire