Marketing is the function where an imported playbook translates least well. Brazil has its own channel habits and its own data protection regime, and a team hired against a headquarters template spends its first year discovering both.
Messaging is a primary channel, not a supplement
Messaging apps are central to how Brazilians interact with businesses — for sales, support and post-sale alike. A marketing team that treats messaging as secondary to email is planning against a market that does not behave that way.
When assessing candidates, this is worth surfacing rather than assuming. Someone whose experience is entirely email and paid search will need to rebuild assumptions — not disqualifying, but better known before the offer than after the first quarter.
Data protection is an operational constraint
Brazil's general data protection law (LGPD) governs how personal data is collected and used, including for marketing, and requires a lawful basis for processing. Consent mechanics, retention and handling data subject requests are day-to-day marketing operations here, not a legal review at the end.
Assess it directly: how the candidate built a database, what they did with old contacts without recorded consent, and how they handled a deletion request. Confirm your own obligations with Brazilian counsel — but hire someone who raises this before you ask.
Assessing portfolios that do not prove authorship
A portfolio shows a team's output, not an individual's contribution. The most efficient question in the field is also the most uncomfortable: in that campaign, what exactly was yours? People who genuinely contributed answer with clear boundaries, including what was not theirs.
What did you measure, and what did you do when the number did not come? separates people who run campaigns from people who learn from them. Marketing is the function where reporting success without evidence is easiest.
Agency and in-house professionals also operate differently — agencies deliver and move on, in-house teams live with the consequences for years. The transition works when it is discussed rather than discovered. Follow-up continues for 90 days, where the reliable early signal is whether the person can explain your funnel using your numbers rather than their previous employer's.
