“30 Days From the World Cup: Brahma Takes Its Campaign Film to a Bar and Releases Free Beer for the Sixth Title”
O Globo reports:
“Exactly 30 days before the start of the World Cup, Brahma celebrates the beginning of the countdown with a special action this Tuesday: the screening of the ‘You’re Cleared to Believe’ campaign film and free draft beer at Boteco Boa Praça, in Leblon. Between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., fans at the bar can guarantee their Chopp Brahma on the house (limit one per person).
“The bar will, once again, be the stadium of Brazilians. Organising this toast is our way of saying that the party has already begun and that, yes, you’re cleared to believe and live the World Cup atmosphere.”
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- NGOs Launch Manual for Municipalities to Protect Children and Adolescents at Major Events (G1)
Assessment
The Brahma campaign is the latest layer in a marketing operation Movendi International has been tracking for months. Ambev, the Brazilian subsidiary ofglobal beer giant AB InBev, has already built proprietary “Arena Nº1” venues in five Brazilian capitals to broadcast Brazil’s matches to a projected 600,000 people. The free-beer giveaway at Boteco Boa Praça in Leblon and the celebrity-led “Tá Liberado Acreditar” film – starring Ronaldo, the striker behind Brazil’s last World Cup win in 2002, and current national team coach Carlo Ancelotti – extend the operation into bars and onto screens, with celebrity authority lent to a campaign whose explicit aim is to “rekindle the flame” for a sixth title.
Brazilian and international child protection organisations are pointing to what happened to children the last time Brazil hosted the tournament – an event whose alcohol environment was directly shaped by AB InBev and FIFA pressure that overturned Brazil’s federal stadium alcohol sales ban via the so-called “Budweiser Bill.” Childhood Brasil and UNICEF Brasil, with backing from the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship, have released a municipal manual for protecting children and adolescents at major events, built on the documented record of that tournament. In host cities that year, complaints to Brazil’s Disque 100 child protection hotline rose roughly 15%. Integrated patrols handled 2,100 cases in 30 days – including child labour, harms linked to alcohol and other drug use, and disappearances. Girls aged 12 to 17 emerged as the principal victims. UNICEF’s “Panorama of Lethal and Sexual Violence Against Children and Adolescents in Brazil” recorded more than 165,000 cases of sexual violence against children and adolescents aged 0 to 19 between 2021 and 2023, with girls 87.3% of registered victims.
The massive 2026 marketing push echoes the 2014 pattern, in a policy environment that again gives Ambev wide latitude. The consequences will be measured in next year’s data.
For alcohol policy advocates, the picture is asymmetric. The alcohol marketing reflects years of corporate preparation: Brazil does not follow international standards to protect people, especially at-risk communities from alcohol marketing. The organisations behind the manual – Childhood Brasil and UNICEF Brasil – are natural allies in building that policy.
In 2020, the WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission on the future of the world’s children highlighted alcohol harm and alcohol industry practices as important child rights issues. It highlighted the need to protect children from two “existential threats”:
- The climate emergency is rapidly undermining the future survival of all species, and the likelihood of a world in which all children enjoy their right to health appears increasingly out of reach.
- A second existential threat that is more insidious has emerged: predatory commercial exploitation that is encouraging harmful and addictive activities that are extremely deleterious to young people’s health.
Alcohol policy advocates face a dramatic reality with aggressive alcohol marketing being unleashed on the Brazilian people, especially children and youth. And the harms from these alcohol industry practices are predictable. This means alcohol policy advocates have an opportunity to document the alcohol marketing exposure of children and youth, the harm that follows, and to build the case for progressive improvements to the alcohol policy environment; they also can elevate the work to expose the predatory practices of the alcohol industry to denormalise Big Alcohol in Brazilian society and politics.