Cachaça Brand? Media Company? Why Not Both?

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No one really wants to watch advertising. To remain relevant, brands need to adopt behavior more akin to media companies, delivering their brand message within content that offers educational, entertainment, or journalistic quality.

This is why I'm very much into what Leblon and Sagatiba are doing on YouTube.

Last week, Sagatiba quietly launched its SagatibaUS YouTube channel, which will evidently be the home for its excellent Premium Side Of Brasil mini-documentaries.

(Earlier episodes were previously hosted on an account named "paulosagatiba". Global Brand Ambassador John Gakuru has some of his own videos up as well.)

Rather than hit you over the head with cloying messages about how great its product is, Sagatiba wants to align itself with everything that is good -- "premium", even -- about Brazil. The first videos posted to the SagatibaUS account offer perspectives from a Brasilian fashion designer, a carpenter, and a chef.

Leblon's content is quite a bit more obvious about its commercial interests, though also appears to be doing a bit more to educate folks about cachaça itself.

They have the Naren and Jacob series, helpful how-to videos, and even a music video that (I'm guessing here) is aimed at getting Americans to pronounce "caipirinha" correctly. (You just have to get past the notion that someone would name their daughter "Caipirinha".)

Heck, they even have a site called, appropriately enough, Cachaça 101, with an entertaining man-on-the-street video of random pedestrians mangling the pronunciation of our favorite distilled spirit.

The point is, both efforts are engaging at different levels. Advertising, in the strictest sense, interrupts -- your favorite TV show, radio program, magazine, city's skyline, etc. Educating bartenders and consumers as to the value of cachaça (and, hopefully, entertaining them along the way) can only be a good thing.