Congresso em Foco's Trending Botics campaign used Twitter's Streaming API to expose political bots during Brazil's 2018 election, earning a Cannes Lions Bronze.
ARCHIVECongresso em Foco Exposes Political Bots With Trending Botics
Trending Botics is a 2019 digital campaign created by FCB Brasil for Congresso em Foco, a Brazilian political journalism platform, that used Twitter's Streaming API and a custom algorithm to detect, track, and publicly expose bot-driven amplification of political candidates during Brazil's 2018 presidential election cycle.
Congresso em Foco operates as one of Brazil's most prominent dedicated political news outlets. The brand commissioned FCB Brasil to develop a campaign that would serve both a journalistic and a civic function: making the invisible machinery of online political manipulation visible to ordinary Brazilian voters. The result was Trending Botics, a technology-enabled social experiment that sat at the intersection of data journalism, advertising craft, and democratic accountability. According to research cited across industry award databases including dandad.org and nyfadvertising.com, the campaign found that nearly 20% of political conversations on Twitter in Brazil were being artificially amplified by bots during the election period.
The campaign launched on September 26, 2018, timed to coincide with the final weeks of Brazil's most consequential and divisive presidential election in a generation. It was subsequently catalogued in advertising archives as a February 2019 campaign entry, reflecting its awards-cycle submission timeline, as documented on clapboard.com. In Brazil, where digital conversation had become a primary arena for political persuasion, the decision to confront bot manipulation directly through a media product rather than a traditional advertisement represented a meaningful strategic departure. Trending Botics earned a Clapboard Score of 67 out of 100, reflecting solid creative and technical ambition grounded in genuine public-interest purpose, tempered by limited independent critical coverage beyond industry award databases.
Brazil is the largest digital advertising market in Latin America. That distinction, confirmed by dentsu.com, underscores how intensely contested the digital information environment had become by 2018, particularly on social platforms where political discourse concentrated ahead of the presidential vote. According to Dentsu, total Brazilian advertising expenditure was forecast to grow 8.8% in 2019, driven principally by mobile usage, and digital was expected to represent approximately 41.8% of Brazilian advertising expenditure that year, up from around 39.0% in 2018.
Within this environment, political bots had emerged as an acute credibility problem. Research cited in award documentation from dandad.org and nyfadvertising.com indicated that close to 20% of political conversations on Twitter in Brazil were being artificially inflated, distorting the apparent popularity of candidates and narratives. Congresso em Foco's editorial identity — rigorous, non-partisan political journalism — made it a credible vehicle for exposing this manipulation. FCB Brasil's strategic insight was that transparency itself could be the campaign's most powerful creative device: rather than telling audiences that bots existed, the platform would show them in real time, using the same data infrastructure the bots exploited.
In the Brazilian media landscape, competitors such as UOL and G1 — the digital news arm of Grupo Globo, the country's dominant broadcast network — command significantly larger general audiences. Congresso em Foco differentiates itself through depth of political coverage rather than scale of reach. Trending Botics extended that differentiation into the technology layer, positioning the outlet as not merely a reporter on political manipulation but an active investigative instrument against it. The campaign addressed a documented failure of platform governance at a moment when Brazilian democratic institutions were under widespread public scrutiny.
Trending Botics was built around a proprietary algorithm that interfaced directly with Twitter's Streaming API. The technical architecture allowed the system to ingest political conversation data in real time, apply pattern-recognition logic to distinguish organic engagement from coordinated bot activity, and surface those findings in a format accessible to general audiences rather than only to data scientists or platform engineers. The campaign contained one primary media asset, as documented on clapboard.com, suggesting a concentrated rather than dispersed creative execution.
Creative leadership at FCB Brasil brought considerable seniority to the project. Joanna Monteiro served as Chief Creative Officer, with Fabio Simões as Executive Creative Director. Creative direction was shared by André Pallú and Marco Monteiro, according to credits documented on dandad.org and nyfadvertising.com. The art direction team comprised André Vervloet, Antonia Zobaran, and Bruno Castellotti, with Leonardo Marçal as Copywriter. Critically, the campaign required specialist technical talent alongside the traditional creative team: Marcelo Arteiro served as Creative Technologist and Emerson Queiroz as Programmer, roles whose inclusion in the top-line credits signals how centrally the engineering work functioned as creative expression rather than mere execution support.
Production was overseen by Charles Nobili as Director of Content Production, with Rodrigo Resende as Editor and Ricardo Magozo as Producer, supported by Mariana Carneiro as Assistant Producer, per credits listed on nyfadvertising.com. Sonido handled audio production. Little Black Book published coverage on September 9, 2019, quoting FCB CCO Joanna Monteiro alongside Congresso em Foco founder Sylvio Costa, providing one of the few editorial contexts in which the campaign's intent was articulated by its makers in their own words. The resulting work occupied an unusual creative register: part investigative tool, part public communication, part technology demonstration, unified by a single data-driven mechanism.
ARCHIVETrending Botics earned measurable recognition across the industry's most competitive award systems. Cannes Lions awarded the campaign a Bronze Lion in the Digital Craft category in 2019, as confirmed by dandad.org and clapboard.com — the most internationally visible validation the work received. D&AD shortlisted the campaign in its 2019 Digital Marketing awards under Creative Use of Technology, according to dandad.org. The One Show shortlisted the campaign twice in 2019, in both the Creative Use of Data and Mobile categories, per nyfadvertising.com. The New York Festivals Advertising Awards granted a Finalist Certificate in the Digital and Mobile, Media and Entertainment category, and also shortlisted the campaign in the Avant-Garde and Innovative Use of Data category, as documented on nyfadvertising.com.
No verified independent performance data — such as reach figures, site traffic uplift for Congresso em Foco, or measurable shifts in audience awareness of political bot activity — is publicly available for Trending Botics. Coverage came primarily through industry award databases and advertising-trade announcements rather than through substantial independent reviews, as noted across adsoftheworld.com and lbbonline.com. Structurally, however, the campaign's effectiveness can be assessed through its award trajectory: recognition across Cannes, D&AD, The One Show, and New York Festivals in a single cycle for a single media asset produced for a specialist political journalism outlet in Brazil represents an exceptional concentration of industry endorsement. The Clapboard Score of 67 out of 100 reflects that achievement while acknowledging the limited public evidence of direct audience or business impact beyond the award record.
Trending Botics is a 2019 digital campaign created by FCB Brasil for Congresso em Foco. It used Twitter's Streaming API and a custom algorithm to detect and expose bot-driven amplification of political candidates during Brazil's 2018 presidential election. Research cited in award documentation indicated nearly 20% of political Twitter conversations were artificially inflated.
FCB Brasil created Trending Botics for Congresso em Foco. Chief Creative Officer Joanna Monteiro led the team, which included Executive Creative Director Fabio Simões and Creative Technologist Marcelo Arteiro. The campaign required both traditional creative and specialist engineering talent, with Emerson Queiroz serving as Programmer, reflecting how central the technology was to the creative concept.
Trending Botics won a Bronze Lion at Cannes Lions 2019 in the Digital Craft category, according to dandad.org and clapboard.com. D&AD shortlisted it under Creative Use of Technology. The One Show shortlisted it in Creative Use of Data and Mobile. New York Festivals granted a Finalist Certificate in the Digital and Mobile, Media and Entertainment category, per nyfadvertising.com.
The Trending Botics algorithm connected to Twitter's Streaming API to ingest political conversation data in real time during Brazil's 2018 election. It applied pattern-recognition logic to distinguish organic engagement from coordinated bot activity, then surfaced findings in a publicly accessible format. Award documentation on dandad.org confirms the tool identified artificially amplified candidate discussion at scale.
Brazil is the largest digital advertising market in Latin America, according to dentsu.com. Dentsu forecast total Brazilian advertising expenditure to grow 8.8% in 2019, driven by mobile usage, with digital representing approximately 41.8% of total ad spend that year. This environment made social platforms a primary arena for political persuasion, amplifying the stakes of bot manipulation.
Trending Botics holds a Clapboard Score of 67 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong creative and technical ambition — validated by Bronze Lion recognition at Cannes Lions 2019 and shortlists at D&AD and The One Show — while acknowledging limited publicly available independent data on direct audience or business impact beyond its award record.
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