Competition in the Americas: Brazil Gaining on Mexico

By Rachelle Crum -- Tradeshow Week, 1/31/2005

The tradeshow industry in Latin America is gathering steam — and those doing business in Brazil and Mexico say their countries' venues and shows are leading the effort.

The two countries contain two of the largest cities in the world (Mexico City and Sao Paulo, Brazil — each with an estimated 18 million inhabitants). And although the industry is more prominent in Mexico — its total available exhibition space (3.2 million square feet) is nearly double that of Brazil's (1.7 million sq. ft.) — the Brazilian industry is picking up momentum thanks to European, Canadian and American companies looking to do business there.

As an example, dmg world media's 17 employees at its office in Sao Paulo so far manage one annual show — Intermodal, a transportation and shipping show — at the Centro de Exposicoes Imigrantes. The show, scheduled June 1–3, last year drew more than 35,000 attendees to an 86,111 net sq. ft. showfloor.

Paul Allingham, executive vice president of Toronto-based dmg, said he prefers doing business in Brazil to other Latin American countries because of the confidence he has in people associated with the industry there. "I've never felt like anybody was being sneaky," he said. "They're quite open and professional. They're really good people."

Allingham said he looked at staging shows in Mexico, but was not pleased with what he saw. "I was uncomfortable that there were more unusual financial transactions there," he said. "What I saw in Mexico was more troublesome than what we saw in Brazil."

Reed Exhibitions Brazil and E.J. Krause & Associates co-manage three annual shows and one biennial show in Brazil (two each in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) from a shared Sao Paulo office.

Andrea Prandini, Sao Paulo-based marketing manager for the companies, said the tradeshow scene there is not only "catching up to the Mexican market, but we're thinking internationally. The tradeshow business in Latin America and Brazil is growing and becoming more specialized."

For example, Prandini said, one of the partnership's four shows, the May 19–22 BES/Brazil Electronic Show in Sao Paulo, is new in 2005 and modeled after Intl. CES.

Plus, she added, "Sao Paulo is becoming the economic capital for Latin America." U.S.-based Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft and Cisco Systems typically have their Latin America headquarters offices there, Prandini noted.

Johnathan Wheatly, a Sao Paulo-based reporter for Latin Finance magazine, agreed with Prandini that tradeshows are "a booming business" in Brazil and it's growing, he said. "There's certainly been more noise made about tradeshows, and they are getting bigger."

However, said Patricia Farias Barlow, president and CEO of Mexico City-based Farias Global Expos, at the moment there's still more money to be made in Mexico.

And "the sophistication of professional, specialized tradeshows in Brazil is not as high as in Mexico," she said. "In Brazil, there are more shows that are more of the horizontal type. There are many more niche tradeshows in Mexico than there are in Brazil."

It does appear that, while the tradeshow as a marketing vehicle has found a foothold in Mexico and Brazil to a greater extent than any other Latin American country, making comparisons between the two industries is difficult.

"It's like trying to compare whether the market in Las Vegas is bigger than the one in Utah," she said. "It's not a matter of infrastructures, it's a matter of buyers."

And culture. Brazil is heavily influenced by Europe, particularly Portugal. Portuguese is the most commonly spoken language in the country.

Allingham said, "They shoot from the hip a little more." Nevertheless, he noted, the tradeshow industry "is not really easy to walk into. You have to have a local presence."