When Brazil was named Creative Country of the Year at Cannes 2025, it should have been a victory lap. Instead, DM9’s AI-manipulated Grand Prix entry turned celebration into crisis, and suddenly every Brazilian agency was painted with the same brush. But two industry veterans say the headlines miss the deeper truth about what makes Brazilian creativity genuinely different—and why that difference matters more than ever.
Flavio Vidigal, Partner and Chief Creative Officer at Rise New York, and Christiano Abrahao, Global Executive Creative Director at Rise New York, have spent their careers between Brazil and New York. They’ve seen both sides of the creative industry, and they have some thoughts about what really went wrong.
Why the Scandal Wasn’t Shocking
Watch this section: 1:39
“It was not shocking, to be honest,” says Vidigal. “That’s a practice that happens in Brazil. And to be completely honest, if you’re fair with this industry all over the world, it’s not something exclusive to the Brazilians.”
The difference this time? “When you start manipulating things in a broad manner, that’s where things get a bit scary,” Vidigal explains. There’s a line between embellishing case studies—something he’s seen agencies do globally—and outright fraud.
Abrahao sees it as part of a bigger structural problem. “There’s these two kinds of projects—the real ones and the self-initiated ones. When you’re putting together a project based on your own desire, I can see that people start pushing the narrative as well, and they can tweak the narrative because they’ve already done so much.”
The Global Context
Watch this section: 5:23
Both creatives stress this isn’t a Brazil-specific issue. Vidigal remembers “a certain holding company agency entering an app that wasn’t even in the app store, claiming millions of users. And that was a New York agency.”
The real issue? “Awards became PR awards,” Vidigal observes. “It’s less about ‘this is a great idea based on a great insight’ and more about how many PR headlines you broke, how many people tweeted about it.”
What CMOs Should Actually Look For
Watch this section: 9:39
When it comes to separating authentic Brazilian creativity from manufactured success, Vidigal says it comes down to a simple question: What do you need as a partner?
“Do you need something that has a strong point of view, that looks to your brand and finds the truth that wants to be communicated? Or do you want something that just does the job and checks boxes?”
He’s direct about the choice: “If you want to do something meaningful, you go the indie route. If you want day-to-day budget management and numbers for your CFO, there’s agencies for that too.”
The Real Creative Process
Watch this section: 14:54
Abrahao emphasizes looking beyond the awards: “I think CMOs should look for great work, great meaningful work that can win awards, and not awards that might win awards but might not build a great brand.”
The advice is practical: “Look at their history, look at the work. You can tell what is real and what is not. Look at what they have done in their career, where they worked—every single element. It’s not that difficult.”
The Awards System Needs Fixing
Watch this section: 17:49
Both creatives agree the real problem isn’t Brazilian agencies—it’s how creativity gets judged.
“Maybe we should have different awards,” Vidigal suggests. “One that only champions creativity, so we can have it clear what we’re judging.”
Abrahao agrees: “Maybe the awards should be thinking about why we ended up where we are. There are reasons for things that maybe started a long time ago.”
The Silver That Felt Like Gold
Watch this section: 20:02
When Rise won their first Silver Lion for a project that literally changed a law in Brazil during COVID—a project that started with the Senate passing legislation because of their work—Vidigal reflects on the reality of being an independent agency.
“How real can we get?” he asks. “We got silver. If you were Ogilvy, you wonder how that project could have gone at Cannes.”
But for indie agencies, perspective matters: “If we win the silver, to us it feels like a Grand Prix.”
The Human Truth Still Stands
Watch this section: 21:01
Despite everything, Vidigal stands by his earlier statement that Brazilian agencies “made human truth a creative KPI before planners wrote it down.”
“Even in those fake campaigns, they’re all based on truth insights,” he explains. “They’re not made up insights. The creative thinking and the thought process is there.”
Abrahao adds: “Focus on doing great stuff that you love. The work cuts through in the end of the day. When the work is good, people see it and they remember.”
What Needs to Stop Right Now
Watch this section: 22:41
The biggest misconception the scandal reinforced? “The fact that Brazilians try to win awards at any cost,” says Vidigal. Abrahao puts it more succinctly: “The misconception that every Brazilian tries to win.”
Their advice for the industry is simple: “We as an industry should start looking at creativity genuinely, versus how much conversation it broke,” Vidigal concludes.
The scandal revealed something important—not about Brazilian creativity, but about an awards system that’s lost sight of what it’s supposed to celebrate. The creativity is still there. Maybe it’s time to fix how we judge it.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
