Comunicação empresarial e patrocínio cultural incentivado: uma análise sob a ótica das críticas à Lei Rouanet

Abstract

Incentivized cultural financing has attracted criticism since the early years of the practice in Brazil, in the 1990s. The criticisms, which remain to this day, mainly concern the delivery to companies of the decision-making power on which project will receive investment and the non alignment of sponsorships carried out by companies for the democratizing purposes of the law. In recent years, since 2016, corporate sponsorship mechanisms via tax incentives, especially the Rouanet Law, have been undergoing a process of delegitimization, being constantly identified as waste, which has caused increased criticism of state funding of culture. In this context, it is relevant to investigate how companies are communicating their encouraged sponsorship practices, and the objective of this study is to analyze the business communication of cultural sponsors from the perspective of criticism of the Rouanet Law. To achieve the objective, a content analysis methodology was chosen for the business documents of the fifty largest national sponsors in the period from 2010 to 2019. The results attested that companies justify their sponsorships highlighting the positive aspects of promoting cultural manifestations for society (social inclusion and job creation) and the understanding that access to these manifestations is a right. It was possible to observe that the sponsors communicate practices that seek to bring transparency and fairness to the project selection processes (use of public notices, disclosure of the evaluation committees and sponsorship policies). Recurring restrictions on thematic (incentive to use alcohol and drugs) and on proponents (individuals) were found. In business communication, the use of cultural sponsorships, encouraged primarily to build an image, can be seen, being also used as a relationship strategy with surrounding communities, highlighting private interests to the detriment of public interests. The communication about the sponsorships carried out proved to be of low quality and insufficient to attest to the alignment of sponsorships with the purposes of the law. The most absent information was the origin of the sponsored value: own or incentivized.