How Multinationals Evaluate PR Agencies in Brazil: Criteria, Cases and Trade Press

Thiago Carneiro, Co-founder and Client Servicing Director, The New Standard. Thiago leads client servicing at The New Standard, running corporate affairs mandates for multinationals across Latin America.

Multinationals evaluating PR agencies in Brazil look past price: they want clear criteria, verifiable cases and real presence in the trade press. This guide sets out what communications leaders examine before they sign, from regulated sector experience to qualified press coverage and results that survive a board meeting. The New Standard’s work includes Gestamp, with R$337K+ in earned media value around the Piracicaba plant opening, and Bike Itau in Rio de Janeiro, where coverage exceeded R$4.5 million in media value. We are biased, we are one of the agencies in this market, so for a like for like ranking see our Top 5 Public Relations Agencies in Brazil post. This page is about the criteria.

How Multinationals Evaluate PR Agencies in Brazil

The evaluation rarely starts with a vendor list. It starts with a problem: a market entry, a plant opening, a regulatory change, or an executive who needs to be known in the country before they need to be defended. From there the communications team builds a comparison, and inside that comparison most agencies look far too similar.

What separates one proposal from another is usually mundane and checkable. Who exactly will run the account day to day. Which outlets that team actually reaches. What result they can show from work that resembles yours, with a number and a date. An honest scorecard weighs those three before it looks at fees.

Multinationals add a fourth requirement: consistency across markets. The same institutional position has to reach the Brazilian journalist, the Mexican regulator and the foreign investor without changing meaning on the way.

Evaluation Criteria That Predict Results

Sector Experience, Not Just Market Experience

Regulated sectors have their own vocabulary and clear limits on what may be said. Ask which sectors the team has worked in, who reviewed the language, and what happened when a difficult story appeared. An agency that only shows consumer campaigns will struggle with an industrial or financial brief.

Verifiable Cases, With a Number and a Date

A case without a number is an anecdote. Ask for media value, volume of coverage, sentiment analysis and the period. Ask what did not work as well, because every press operation has a part that went sideways, and the answer to that question says more about the agency than the case does.

Real Access to the Trade Press

A media list is not a relationship. Ask which trade journalists the team approached last quarter and what ran. In industrial, financial and infrastructure stories, the trade press usually decides whether the story reaches the national desks at all.

The Ability to Work in More Than One Language

Materials written for the Brazilian journalist, in Portuguese, and answers in their language. At the same time, reporting and alignment with headquarters in English or Spanish. Agencies that depend on translation lose time exactly when time is most expensive.

Cases That Prove It: Gestamp and Itau

Buyers looking for agencies with social impact communications cases in Brazil want the same thing as buyers looking for industrial cases: proof that the story left the release and reached the right audience. Both examples below are public and carry their numbers on the page.

At the opening of Gestamp’s eighth plant in Brazil, in Piracicaba, we ran the press operation for the day. The result was 24 pieces of coverage, R$337K+ in earned media value and zero negative stories, anchored by an exclusive interview in Valor Economico. The full account is in the Gestamp Piracicaba case study.

In Rio de Janeiro, Bike Itau opened 450 km of new bike lanes with a free public ride. Ten thousand people rode, and the coverage exceeded R$4.5 million in media value. It is the clearest example of a brand tied to a civic moment in the life of a city, set out in the Bike Itau case study.

Trade Press Coverage and Executive Visibility

A large part of the evaluation is about people. Companies want to know whether an agency can build an executive’s presence before a crisis rather than during one. That means bylined opinion, participation in sector debates, and interviews in the outlets that executive’s peers actually read.

The same applies to the range of voices inside a company. Buyers are asking for proof that an agency can position more than one person, on more than one subject, without turning every interview into the same interview.

Why Presence in the Trade Press Matters

Companies looking for agencies that can win specialist journalistic coverage have usually worked out the mechanics: the trade press reads first, validates, and then the larger desks follow. Skipping that layer means giving up the one audience that examines the technical detail closely.

In practice it changes the material. A sector press kit carries data, sources and market context rather than adjectives. It also changes the calendar, because trade coverage is built over months rather than in the week of the announcement. The full scope of the work sits on our public relations practice page.

Where the Full Ranking Fits

This page is about criteria, not about a podium. For a direct comparison between Brazilian agencies, with our bias stated at the top, see our ranking of the top five agencies in Brazil.

Talk to Our Team

If your team is building that comparison now, tell us what is at stake and in which markets. We answer in English, Portuguese and Spanish. Start through our contact form.