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  Brazil boasts a population of around 200 million people—a sprawl of races, cultures and ethnicities spread across 5 regions and 26 states. In some parts of Brazil, residents are digesting print media for the first time; in others, residents have just bought their first television sets; in cities like Rio and São Paulo, younger generations are as sophisticated and plugged-in as their contemporaries anywhere else in the world. More relevant to the job I was carrying out for Brasil Kirin, the country is divided into five government-issued class segments, each one based exclusively on a household’s gross monthly income. These are class A (Wealthy), B (Fairly Wealthy), C (Average), D (Lower Middle Class) and E, which is synonymous with poverty and illiteracy.

  Brazilian natives are born into a class and, barring any surprises, the governmental machinery ensures they will stay in that class for the foreseeable future. Once Brazilians are tagged with a C or a D, it is almost impossible for them to improve their economic future or social standing. A stamp of C or D also signifies the degree of education a person has attained. Members of classes A and B, for example, have usually completed some form of higher education, whereas members of class D haven’t finished high school and class E is essentially unschooled. A Brazilian’s economic class also determines where a person’s children will go to school, and the kind of work he will end up doing. Class A is generally made up of business owners, bankers and highly skilled workers, whereas class C, which includes teachers, nurses and mechanics, generally comprises those who provide services to classes A and B. Less formally, a Brazilian’s class designation also dictates the sorts of food and beverages he eats and drinks, where he shops and the kinds of bars and restaurants he frequents. In short, each Brazilian social class brings with it an unspoken suite of “allowable” tastes and desires, from clothing to music to food.

  “Being told that there are no social classes in the place where the interviewee lives is an old experience for sociologists,” the author Leonard Reissman wrote in his 1965 book Class in American Society. “‘We don’t have classes in our town’ almost invariably is the first remark recorded by the investigator . . . Once that has been uttered and is out of the way, the class divisions in the town can be recorded with what seems to be an amazing degree of agreement among the good citizens of the community.”1 Brazil is no exception to this ethnographic truth. Most Brazilians will deny they notice any class distinctions, but after a few beers, most will tell you they can assess the social class of other Brazilians on the basis of teeth, clothing, shoes and—not least, especially for woman—their hair and facial features.

  The average Brazilian woman is short and slightly heavy, with a dark complexion and curly or frizzy hair, not at all helped by the country’s high levels of humidity. She may or may not have African ancestry, considering that outside Nigeria, Brazil today is home to the largest percentage of people of African descent (during the slave trade era, Brazil was the destination for nearly 5 million enslaved Africans).2 The straighter a Brazilian woman’s hair, the higher her perceived social class, which explains the immense popularity of hair straighteners in Brazil. (An executive at Procter & Gamble told me once that throughout South America, girls and young women spend up to 15 minutes de-tangling their hair.) It may also explain why, alongside Colombia and Venezuela, Brazil has overtaken the United States as the plastic surgery capital of the world. As the Guardian reported in 2014, “With less than 3 percent of the world’s population, Brazil accounted for 12.9 percent of the cosmetic operations performed [in 2013]. This included 515,776 breasts reshaped, 380,155 faces tweaked, 129,601 tummies tucked, 13,683 vaginas reconstructed, 219 penises enlarged and 63,925 buttocks augmented.”3 As a rule, Brazilians have no qualms about undergoing plastic surgery; plastic surgery signals to the world that they care about their appearance.

  I soon grew to understand the intricacies of the national social hierarchy. Brazil’s national identity revolves around three things: football (i.e., soccer), beer and the beach. Football is a passion in many countries, especially England, but at some point most English boys give up their childhood dream of becoming world-class athletes. When I asked teenage Brazilian boys about their dreams about the future, nine times out of ten they told me that their fantasy was to become a football player. For them, the images of the country’s greatest stars—Pelé, Garrincha, Ronaldhino, Kaká, Zico, Socrates and others—were vivid and enduring. Yet in a country the size of Brazil, the chances of succeeding in sports are small, which is why, at some point, reality is replaced with the harshness and hardship of everyday life.

  One contributing factor is Brazil’s exhausted educational system. There are so many children to educate that in lower and elementary schools, one-half of the school-age population attends school in the mornings, and the other half shows up for classes in the afternoon. For anyone other than the top economic classes, there is no organized way to get ahead in Brazil—no after-school or mentorship programs or clubs. Compare this to the United States, for example, where many parents are so afraid their children won’t get into the right college that they schedule lessons, hire SAT tutors and set up music, karate, dance and language lessons. Few hours in the day of a middle-class American child are unscheduled, whereas for many Brazilian children, life itself is an ongoing improvisation.

  Also in contrast to the United States or England, few Brazilians would consider “jumping class” by returning to school, studying for an advanced degree or applying for a better job. In Brazil, class migration is based exclusively on consumption, appearance and brands, which has the unfortunate effect of exhausting people’s bank accounts without a plan to replenish them. Even indigent Brazilians spend their money on status symbols. As a 2015 New York Times op-ed noted about Brazil, “Many homes have flat-screen TVs, but are not hooked up to public sewers. Many say these 40 million whose living standards have been raised are not a new middle class but are just ‘poor people with money.’”4 Brazil is the only country on earth where entire product ranges exist to help consumers blend into the class just above them.

  While Devassa wanted to target all classes, the B class was clearly the brand’s favored demographic. To celebrate the brand’s origins, I also wanted to relaunch Devassa in Rio de Janeiro, the coastal city where trends and fashions generally take root across Brazil. But to what should Brazilians aspire? The question was familiar, and one that over the years had taken me from Hong Kong to Italy . . . and back to Brazil.

  Before exploring aspiration, let’s ask ourselves whether it’s possible to determine the taste differences among half-a-dozen beers or, for that matter, water. Globally, there are thousands of bottled water brands—one Los Angeles restaurant even has a water sommelier on staff5—but if I blindfolded you, could you really describe the taste of one bottled water over another, and mean it? An equivalent number of beer brands swells the shelves of most supermarkets and liquor stores. Whenever I’ve done blind taste tests with consumers, most say they can detect subtle taste differences among beer brands. But the fact of the matter is that 99 percent of the time, what they claim is the taste of Heineken, or Molson, or Corona is, in fact, another brand entirely. So what lies behind our preference for one beer over another?

  More than most beverages, beer and emotion cannot be teased apart in Brazil. Almost every time Brazilians interact with friends or family, beer serves as the centerpiece of the gathering. Ironically, all across the world—including Brazil—a large majority of consumers dislikes the taste of beer. Many have told me that when they had their first taste of the stuff, usually when they were young, their distaste was outweighed by the symbolic meaning of beer as an emblem of adulthood. In this way, beer is like coffee. Most of us like the smell of coffee beans and freshly brewed coffee—but do any of us enjoy the actual taste of coffee? With both beverages, it seems, we embed in our memories the moment when we first tasted them, as well as the symbolic transformation we experienced as we made the internal shift from child to adul
t. The memory of this moment lasts throughout our lives, overriding the taste of both beer and coffee and tricking us into believing that what we’re drinking tastes good even when it doesn’t.

  Considering that I was in Brazil to help transform Devassa, I started to spend my evenings in bars, observing the various local rituals around beer drinking. After a few days, it became clear how Brazilian beer drinkers conveyed discreet class signals based on how they positioned their bottles on the table. If they were drinking a premium beer, drinkers set them down with the label visible to the rest of the room. If the beer was less expensive, the label faced inward. I knew that for many Brazilians, one core aspiration around beer drinking was to order enough of the “right” beer—for example, Heineken. A 22-year-old Brazilian man even told me, “Me and my friends would save money to buy a Heineken bucket at the bar. It makes us feel like kings—until we catch the bus home.”

  Another phenomenon I noticed was the Brazilian preoccupation with temperature. Inside bars or corner stores, each fridge featured a display showing the current temperature inside the unit. Most were extremely low—24 degrees Fahrenheit was common—meaning that the beers inside the fridge were practically frozen. As is true in many parts of the world, including America, Brazilians prefer their beer impossibly cold. Ice-cold temperatures typically kill whatever minimal flavor beer has to begin with, which in the case of both Brazil and the United States, indicates that residents in both countries are averse to strong bitter flavors.

  Beer, of course, was also an incomparable bonding tool. People drank it almost exclusively in social settings, surrounded by large groups of friends. Like any alcohol, beer served as a device of transformation, dissolving emotional boundaries. But what about class boundaries?

  On the basis of my Subtexting, I knew that if a Brazilian woman wanted to “jump class,” almost always the first thing she did was to go online to study and research her chosen class on both an emotional and materialistic level. On the basis of her research, she might begin to talk differently. She might make plans to straighten her hair, or listen to new music, and in some cases persuade herself to embrace a new style, or fashion, that she knows the upper classes favor. I’d caught any number of Brazilian women flicking through websites, as if through a museum of dreams, fantasizing about the lifestyles, and the brands, of A or B class people. These brands, in turn, become tickets, membership passes almost, to the next social rung.

  Earlier I wrote that our perception of the world is almost always local, focusing almost exclusively around ourselves and our neighborhoods and our traditions and our beliefs. But who influences us to buy a certain product, helps us form an opinion or exposes us to a brand we later use ourselves—a wristwatch, a musical genre, a facial moisturizer, a wine label? It’s not something we often think about, but when I ask this question to people online and offline, the answer is invariably celebrities.

  It’s fascinating to trace how the concept of celebrity has evolved since the 1960s, when Giorgio Armani first had the idea of giving away free clothing to celebrities, thereby linking clothing with aspiration and glamour. A decade earlier, in the 1950s, there were maybe a dozen or more “real” celebrities, but by the 1990s this list had grown to hundreds of people, including celebrity CEOs, chefs, hairdressers, party planners and interviewers. Today the list includes “subcelebrity” categories, including reality show stars and YouTube personalities. In a 2015 survey of 1,500 respondents ages 13 to 18 conducted for Variety by celebrity brand strategist Jeetendr Sehdev found that YouTube stars “scored significantly higher than traditional celebrities across a range of characteristics considered to have the highest correlation to influencing purchases among teens . . . YouTubers were judged to be more engaging, extraordinary and relatable than mainstream stars.”6

  Notwithstanding celebrities, who influences us within the context of our own lives? Every culture, it should be remembered, has its own default topics of conversation, a default script of subjects, ranging from the weather to sports to food. When two people meet for the first time, generally speaking, what do they talk about? What is the first thing out of a waiter’s mouth in Russia, in England, in America, in France, in Montenegro? How do taxi drivers greet passengers across the world, and what do they discuss during the ride? What do neighbors say when they meet in the lobby or the sidewalk, or mothers when they meet other mothers in the park?

  As I’ve sat in homes across the world, I’ve noticed we tend to “read from” a conversational script that seldom varies week after week. Depending on the country I’m in, this script has its local nuances, but it generally goes like this: Two people greet each other. They say something about the weather. They offer each other something to drink or eat. They exchange compliments about each other’s clothing. But when we deviate from this script, what causes us to stray? The answer, I found out while conducting an informal, monthlong experiment, is the objects surrounding us.

  Once, when I was consulting for Nescafé’s instant coffee division, the executive team and I realized that many contemporary kitchens had become so sleek and minimalist there was no longer any physical space for Nescafé’s signature glass coffee jars. This meant that Nescafé as a topic of conversation was also gone—which in turn had led to declining revenues at the company. My mission was to bring Nescafé coffee jars back inside the kitchen, and back into the conversation. I tried this same strategy out in Brazil. To see whether I could influence people’s conversations, I brought along small decorative objects, which I placed in people’s kitchens or living rooms. A coffee mug. A glass jar. A yellow teapot. In more than three-quarters of the cases, the object, or the brand, dominated the conversation for an average of seven minutes. It seemed that by introducing an object into the room, I could alter the direction of a conversation and “change the script.”

  This insight had strong ramifications for the rebranding of Devassa. What consumers say about a brand can be controlled and in some cases reduced to a preprepared sales pitch. For a brand, this is critical. Imagine: ten words that represent the heart, soul and essence of a brand, no longer controlled by print ads or television commercials, but by consumers themselves. As the popularity of hair straighteners and plastic surgery across Brazil attested, more than most countries Brazil was strongly affected by “influencers” and by “aspiration.” I tucked this observation away for later.

  Doesn’t the desire to “change the conversation” explain why some of us wear glasses with colorful frames, or boldly colored necklaces and earrings, or wildly decorated handbags, or even rubber bracelets? These small touches and additions serve as both calls for attention as well as talking points. Generally speaking, there is a story attached to the lizard pin we wear, or the black rubber strap we wear around our wrist. They position us in the center of the story. When we become the star, the focal point, the narrator or the subject of attention, our brains release dopamine. Any celebrity will tell you that fame and attention are addictive, which may partly explain why most social media users stream a steady barrage of news, food photos and landscapes and receive in return a cannonade of compliments (“Wow,” “Amazing,” “Love it”). Via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, we have all become celebrities in our own lives.

  Up until a few years ago, whenever I gave speeches I asked audience members if anyone was wearing a yellow LiveStrong bracelet. (Over the years I’ve seen businessmen in Armani suits and expensive Swiss watches wearing the LiveStrong band which, I might add, is manufactured in China.) Invariably two dozen or so audience members would raise their hands. Why do you wear it, I asked? Most told me they wore the LiveStrong bracelet to show their support for the fight against cancer. Today, in the wake of Lance Armstrong’s doping controversy, almost no one would want to be seen wearing a LiveStrong bracelet. Still, when I asked audience members why they stopped wearing the bracelet—did this mean they no longer believed in fighting cancer?—most admitted they began wearing the bracelet to s
tand out, to inspire a conversation and even to show their superior moral status.

  Across the globe, aspiration exists at every level of society, from the lowest to the highest. But how does aspiration begin? How old are we when we first become aware of desiring what we don’t have? More to the point, to what, or to whom, did most Brazilians aspire?

  As I traveled across the country, one word kept popping up: Cariocas.

  Carioca is a demonym used to refer to the residents of Rio de Janeiro. The term originated as a mild insult to refer to the descendants of immigrants, but has evolved today to refer to any Rio native, and to membership in a distinct, coveted, moneyed lifestyle. “To be Carioca, you have to enjoy the beach and be casual in life,” one Brazilian told me. Another Rio resident defined Carioca this way: “You are social and friendly with everybody you meet.” Among the other definitions of a Carioca: Free-spirited. Not worrying too much about life. Letting things happen. Every Brazilian I interviewed was convinced that the Carioca way of life was exclusive to Rio, and also exclusive to Brazil.