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The Colour of Corruption

Reclame Aqui

Issue 44 | September 2017

Agency

Grey Brazil

Creative Team

Co-President & CCO Rodrigo Jatene Executive Creative Director Adriano Matos Creative Directors Rafael Gonzaga and Bruno Brux Art Directors Ale Koston, Tiago Pinheiro Copywriters Rafael Gonzaga, Bruno Brux Co-President Marcia Esteves Client Services Maria Pirajá Project Managers Nathalia Beividas, Amanda Ramos Client Approval Maurício Vargas, Felipe Paniago, Francisco Recalde

Date

May 2017

Background

During the economic boom in Brazil of the 2000s, though consumer spending soared, many companies often failed to deliver on their promises. Reclame Aqui was founded in 2001 to hold businesses to account. On their website they published both customer complaints and the response to them. If the company wouldn't listen to them, other potential customers would.

Reclame Aqui became the leading consumer action group in the country, helping more than 85 million people each year expose the shoddy practices and the lies of thousands of corporations. The website got over 600,000 unique visitors each day.

Idea

Fast cut to 2016. Brazil was living in an age of massive corruption and political cynicism. When the police launched Operation Carwash in 2014, it revealed a shocking system of kickbacks involving almost all the major political parties and hundreds of leading companies.

Taxpayers were fleeced out of billions of dollars as, in return for big contracts, business poured money back to the politicians who favoured them.

Though the judiciary began to have success in prosecuting some of the crooked politicians, there were a further 70,000 of them at federal, state and city level.

The 'Colour of Corruption' tool allowed citizens to see precisely who was corrupt and who was not.

In just three clicks they could download a Google Chrome plug-in, which highlighted in purple the name of any politician involved in nefarious deeds.

A simple mouse-over made available all the data that had been collected about the individual, the accusations, investigations and convictions. Revealed were the profiles of all the politicians who had tried to shut down Reclame Aqui.

It worked on every website, search engine, news portal and social network.

Results

In the first week alone, there were over 100,000 downloads of the plug-in.

One of Brazil's most respected universities, Catholic Pontificia University of Paraná (PUCPR), partnered Reclame Aqui. 20,000 students volunteered to track official data from the courts to update the database each day.

There were at least eight serious attempts to hack and bring down the website.

Our Thoughts

To find out more about this amazing campaign, I went online and found a long article written by Jonathan Watts in The Guardian (https://www.theguardian. com/world/2017/jun/01/brazil-operation-car-wash-is-this-the-biggest-corruption-scandal-in-history). I urge you to read it.

Ironically, Operation Carwash, which started out with such good intentions, ended up allowing some of the most corrupt politicians of all to thrive.

Originally, we selected this campaign because it is a clever application of technology to a problem. More than that, however, it is a much-needed exposé of all those politicians who are putting Brazil's frail democracy at risk.

Knowledge is power, so goes the saying. In this instance I hope fervently that Brazil's citizenry not only get to know who is damaging their country so badly but also get to do something about it.

A Google Chrome plug-in high-lighted in purple the names of any politician linked to corruption and scandal. It worked in websites, news portals, even on social media pages.