Mercado Livre

Discover how Soundthinkers brought back the voice of the father of one of Brazil’s greatest football players.

In 2021 Mercado Livre became a sponsor of Flamengo, designing marketing campaigns that spotlighted the team. One of these initiatives, led by the agency GUT, was the “Goal #335” campaign, for Father’s Day. Flamengo legend Zico was set to score one more goal at the Maracanã Stadium—this time at the request of his late father, Mr. Antunes, who passed away decades ago and never had the chance to witness his son’s goals in the iconic venue. Mr. Antunes’ request would be delivered via a voice message played in the stadium. However, reviving his voice presented a challenge. Not only had he been gone for many years, but there were also very few recordings of his speech available. We immersed ourselves in researching voice technologies and delving into the “character” of Mr. Antunes. Through interviews with family members and an in-depth analysis of the existing material, we decoded his tone, speech patterns, accent, quirks, and every vocal parameter. In collaboration with speech therapy professionals and artificial intelligence voice synthesis experts, we built a phoneme dictionary that closely resembled our target voice. Using multiple recordings and meticulous editing, we reconstructed Mr. Antunes’ voice to deliver a sentence he had never said before. The message was played in the stadium for Zico, who was deeply moved by the result.