Institutional
Background
BACKGROUND
Founded in 1950 by Victor Civita as Editora Abril, Abril Group currently is one of the largest, most influential media and education groups in Latin America. Throughout its history, it has expanded and diversified its operations and currently provides quality content in multiple platforms.
The Publisher began with the publication O Pato Donald (“Donald Duck”) in a small office in the center of São Paulo. It had in total half a dozen employees. Victor Civita named the company Abril after the month of April, when spring begins in Europe. The tree is a representation of fertility, the very image of life. Green is the color of hope and optimism.
In the late 1950s, Abril initiated its major transformation. In the following years, it attracted the country’s most talented professionals and invested in training and technology, giving rise to a Brazilian journalistic culture in texts, photography, publishing, and production.
In 1960, in a bold and innovative venture, Victor Civita decided to publish reference works in issues. It was a publishing phenomenon. The knowledge formerly restricted to libraries and bookstores was then coming to the newsstands. In 2007, Abril returned to this publishing segment with the release of the collection A Grande Cozinha.
In 1961, the growth of the Disney family and the release of Zé Carioca encouraged the production of national comics. Recreio, released in 1969, went further with the proposal of educating while promoting fun, with its stories and activities. It was published for 12 years and was launched again in 2000 with an updated editorial proposal.
Abril was present in major transformations of Brazilian society. The growth of tourism and the automobile industry, for example, gave birth to Quatro Rodas, Guia Quatro Rodas, and Viagem e Turismo. Football, sex, and male behavior were present in magazines on the subject with Placar, Playboy, VIP, and Men’s Health. Veja, currently the country’s largest magazine and the world’s third largest weekly news magazine, was responsible for some of the best articles published in the national press.
Abril also closely followed Brazilian women over the last five decades with the introduction of women’s magazines. Capricho began with photo-novels and, in 1981, was reshaped to communicate with teenage girls. Manequim, Abril’s first fashion magazine, is one of the most popular in Brazil today. Claudia, which was created in 1961, initially focused on housewives. Over the years, to keep up with women’s evolution, it received successive adaptations and addressed controversial, current issues. In the following decades, a number of titles appeared, including Nova, Elle, Estilo, Gloss and, more recently, Women’s Health.
To remain in its leading position, Abril has diversified its operations, investing in television and the Internet. It has provided Pay TV, digital TV, broadband Internet, VoIP, and MTV, with high-quality programming targeted at the youth. On the Internet, the first initiative was BOL, Brasil Online, launched in 1996 and soon incorporated into UOL. In 1999, Ajato, a broadband Internet provider, was launched. Today, Abril Mídia Digital is the group’s unit responsible for Abril’s new digital businesses activities. The area is responsible for understanding and meeting the desires of digital consumers, developing products, content, and services on platforms and in formats that meet the expectations of these new audiences.
Education is increasingly important in the knowledge era and is also one of Abril’s areas of expertise. Founded in 2007 as a branch of the Abril Group, Abril Educação began to operate separately from Abril S.A. in early 2010 through a corporate reorganization. It includes publishers Ática and Scipione; education systems Anglo, Ser, Maxi and GEO; schools pH, Satélite and ETB (Escolas Técnicas do Brasil); Siga, Red Balloon english schools, preparatory courses for tenders and Livemocha, a language teaching community.
Abril remains in continual evolution and, with its usual pioneering spirit, announced a partnership with South Africa’s media group Naspers in May 2006, which now holds 30% stake in Abril S.A., including the purchase of the 13.8 % stake belonging to the investment funds managed by Capital International since July 2004.
Today, Abril publishes 52 titles, reaching approximately 28 million readers. The Publisher uses digital processes and prints about 594 million magazines annually. The Group has invested more and more in digital media and one of its main highlights on the Internet is the Capricho brand, which has developed exclusive content for the Web and currently is, according to Comscore – a market research company that provides marketing data and services - the world’s largest teen site, with 8.9 million unique visitors and 222 million page views in between august 2011 and 2012.
