ARCHIVECrazy Santa
In December 2019, Rema 1000, a leading Norwegian supermarket chain known for its philosophy of...
Vale Sul Shopping Finds the Heart of Christmas in Animated Film
Vale Sul Shopping's 2019 "Merry Christmas" campaign — released in Brazil in December 2019 under the title "Feliz Natal em Mim" and the hashtag #NatalValeSul — is an animated narrative film that positions the shopping center not as a commercial destination but as a place where love, memory, and genuine human connection find their fullest expression during the Christmas season.
The campaign centres on a single animated film, produced entirely by Consulado Creative Studio and directed by Marcos Boca Ceravolo and Tomas Pessoa Gurgel. Its central line — "A gente se olha e enfim descobre que o amor é nobre, guarda sempre o melhor para o fim" — functions simultaneously as poetic lyric and brand proposition, asserting that the most valuable things in life are saved for last and offered with sincerity. The film unfolds as a character-driven story, its visual language shaped by detailed 3D animation and its emotional register anchored by an original score from audio house Panela and a vocal performance by singer Rhaissa Bittar.
In Brazil, where the Christmas retail period represents one of the most commercially significant windows of the year, Vale Sul Shopping chose to invest not in promotional messaging but in storytelling. The campaign targets an audience that seeks emotional resonance from the brands they encounter during the festive season, situating the shopping center within São Paulo state's competitive regional mall landscape. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 72 out of 100, reflecting strong creative craft and narrative coherence against limited documented reach data.
Vale Sul Shopping operates within a densely competitive regional retail environment. In Brazil, approximately 658 shopping centers were operating in 2019, according to Abrasce census data, and Brazilian shopping-center sales reached R$192.8 billion that year — a year-over-year increase of 7.9% in nominal terms, per Abrasce figures reported by Valor Globo. Within the São José dos Campos and Vale do Paraíba corridor, Vale Sul Shopping's primary competitive set includes CenterVale Shopping, Colinas Shopping, and Shopping Jacareí, each competing for the same regional consumer's loyalty and festive spend.
Against this backdrop, the strategic logic of "Feliz Natal em Mim" becomes clear. Rather than competing on price, promotional offer, or footfall-driving mechanics — instruments available to every competitor — the campaign establishes an emotional positioning that is harder to replicate. The insight driving the work is that Brazilian consumers, during the Christmas period, are not simply seeking transactions; they are seeking experiences and moments that carry personal meaning. This insight is consistent with a broader shift in Brazilian retail communications observed across the 2019 season, as mall operators moved toward brand-building content designed to generate affinity rather than immediate conversion.
The campaign's decision to use animation rather than live action deepens this positioning. Animation allows the narrative to carry universal emotional weight without the specificity of a single demographic's face or family, making the story legible to a wide regional audience. The hashtag #NatalValeSul extends the campaign from screen to social conversation, encouraging audiences to associate their own Christmas sentiment with the brand.
Consulado Creative Studio serves as both production company and creative engine for the "Merry Christmas" campaign. Directors Marcos Boca Ceravolo and Tomas Pessoa Gurgel led the project from concept through delivery, working from an original story by Rodrigo Digodo Jackson and a screenplay by writers Mariana Bardan and Eduardo Melo. The depth of the production team reflects the ambition of the work: character design was handled by Tiago Calliari, who also contributed to concept development alongside Henrique Lobato, while storyboarding was led by Hugo Takahashi and animatic production by Nelson Guedes.
The 3D pipeline was overseen by supervisor Vander Zafa Junior, with modelling credits attributed to Thiago Gomes de Moraes and Rafael Aldado, and rigging responsibilities distributed across a dedicated technical team. Executive producer Luciana Pessoa coordinated the production alongside production coordinator Mauricio de Andrade and assistant producer Isabella Augusto — a staffing structure that signals a production of meaningful scale for a regional retail client.
Audio production was entrusted to Panela, a Brazilian audio house with a prior working relationship with Consulado — the same pairing produced Vale Sul Shopping's 2015 Christmas campaign, an animated film featuring a penguin journeying from the South Pole to the North Pole, according to records documented at Premio Abrasce Com Br. The 2019 campaign's original music was performed by vocalist Rhaissa Bittar, whose contribution transforms the film's poetic lyric into its emotional centrepiece. Together, the visual and sonic layers produce a work that prioritises craft and feeling over spectacle.
The "Merry Christmas" campaign recorded 71,345 views and 1,135 likes on the platform where it was archived, as documented by Clapboard. These figures represent the publicly available engagement record for the film and constitute the primary quantitative evidence of its reach. No verified performance data has been published in the trade press — no coverage appears in Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious — and no awards recognition for this campaign is documented in the Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, The One Show, or D&AD databases, as confirmed by Clapboard's own archive research.
The absence of mainstream trade press attention is not atypical for regional Brazilian retail campaigns produced outside the major São Paulo agency network. What the engagement record does indicate is a meaningful organic audience for a single animated film produced for a regional shopping center, in a market where, per Abrasce data cited by valor.globo.com, Brazilian shopping-center sales reached R$192.8 billion in 2019. Within that context, the campaign's view count reflects a localised but genuinely engaged audience rather than a nationally scaled one.
Structurally, the film's effectiveness lies in its emotional clarity and production quality. The combination of 3D animation, original music, and a poetic narrative creates a piece of branded content that functions as entertainment rather than advertising — a format structurally predisposed to completion viewing and affective recall. The Clapboard Score of 72 out of 100 reflects this creative strength, tempered by the limited documentation of wider reach or measurable business impact.
Vale Sul Shopping's 2019 "Merry Christmas" campaign is an animated film titled "Feliz Natal em Mim," produced in Brazil by Consulado Creative Studio. Released in December 2019 under the hashtag #NatalValeSul, the film uses poetic narrative and original music to position the shopping center as a space for authentic human connection during the Christmas season.
Marcos Boca Ceravolo and Tomas Pessoa Gurgel directed the film. Both work through Consulado Creative Studio, which served as the production company for the campaign. The original story was written by Rodrigo Digodo Jackson, with the screenplay developed by Mariana Bardan and Eduardo Melo for this 2019 Brazilian Christmas campaign.
The Vale Sul Shopping 2019 "Merry Christmas" campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 72 out of 100. This reflects strong creative craft and narrative coherence in the animated film, balanced against limited publicly documented reach metrics and no recorded awards recognition in major international advertising competitions.
The campaign recorded 71,345 views and 1,135 likes on its archived platform, as documented by Clapboard. No verified performance data appears in major trade publications, and no social media discussion has been identified across Twitter/X, Reddit, LinkedIn, or YouTube. These figures represent the full extent of publicly available engagement data for the film.
Animation allowed the narrative to carry emotional universality without anchoring the story to a single demographic, making the film accessible to Vale Sul Shopping's broad regional audience in Brazil. The format also continued a creative lineage established by the brand's 2015 Christmas campaign, also an animated film produced by Consulado Creative Studio with audio by Panela.
Brazilian vocalist Rhaissa Bittar performed the original music for the 2019 campaign. Audio production was handled by Panela, the same audio house that worked with Consulado Creative Studio on Vale Sul Shopping's 2015 Christmas animated film. Bittar's performance delivers the campaign's central poetic line, which functions as both lyric and brand proposition.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
