In most Portuguese companies there is no marketing department. There is a person who does marketing along with three other things, usually the owner, an operations manager or whoever is best with a phone.
That is not a weakness to work around. It is the normal condition of this market, and content that assumes otherwise simply does not get made.
What actually changes
The brief has to be written by the supplier
Asking a person with four jobs to write a brief produces a delay, not a brief. They know the answers and they will never find an hour to type them.
The version that works is a ten minute call, followed by the creator or agency writing the brief and sending it back for a yes or no. Approving something takes five minutes; producing it takes an afternoon nobody has.
The preparation will not happen
Whatever is asked for in advance, half of it will not be ready on the day. The product will be there, the space will be roughly tidy, and the list of three things to prepare will have been read on the morning.
Plan for that rather than resenting it. Bring what can be brought, choose a setup that survives a room that was not staged, and treat anything prepared as a bonus.
Approval is instant and then absent
The same person will answer within an hour on the day of delivery and then disappear for two weeks. Both are normal, and both are about their week rather than about the project.
The practical response is to get the decision while you have their attention, in the same message: here is the file, here is what I need a yes on, and here is what happens if I do not hear back by Friday.
| What a supplier usually assumes | What is true in most companies here |
|---|---|
| A brief will arrive | It has to be written for them |
| Someone will prepare the location | It will be roughly as it always is |
| Feedback comes from a team | It comes from one person, fast, once |
| There is a content calendar | There is a busy season and everything else |
| Monthly output is realistic | Quarterly, in batches, is realistic |
The last row is where most content programmes in this market die. A monthly commitment sounds ambitious and turns into a monthly reminder that nobody has done anything, and after three months everyone concludes that content does not work here.
The budget sits somewhere else
There is no marketing line, so the money comes from wherever the person deciding can find it: their own discretionary spend, a sales budget, occasionally the same pot as the trade fair.
Two consequences follow. The decision is faster than in a company with a marketing budget, because nobody has to defend it against another department. And the timing is tighter, because that pot has other calls on it and it empties.
Ask when the money is easiest rather than assuming January. In a lot of Portuguese businesses the answer is right after the busy season, when the year is proven and there is finally an afternoon to think.
The realistic cadence
Two shoots a year, each producing a batch, is a plan a company with no marketing team can actually keep.
That means filming enough in one day to cover several months: the product, the process, the person, the practical questions, a seasonal piece filmed out of season if the setting allows it. It is more preparation for the supplier and far less asked of the client, which is the correct division of labour here.
The alternative, a small amount of content every month, requires someone to hold the thread continuously, and there is nobody in the building whose job that is.
What to ask for, in one message
Three things, all decidable in five minutes.
Who is the one person who says yes. What the two questions are that customers ask most often. And which week in the next three months is genuinely possible for a shoot.
That is the whole intake. Everything else can be proposed rather than requested, which is the difference between a project that starts and one that stays in a thread of good intentions.
