Brazil’s largest cultural festival had the most plural and diverse programme of all time, giving voice to all audiences, without any distinction. But that bothered the then mayor of Rio de Janeiro, who ordered the confiscation of copies of a comic book that featured a gay kiss. To the mayor, the content was inappropriate. Amid such illegality and legal disputes, a crisis committee was called upon and communication was redesigned. It was necessary to galvanize the national and international press and influencers against the attempted censorship, and preserve the democracy and reputation of the festival. Also, advertising of the event programme needed to be boosted in order to balance up the news reports and prevent the controversy from outshining content about the Book Biennial Fair Rio. The successful strategy ensured the maintenance of freedom of expression and preserved the Book Fair image as an actual democratic shelter.

The PR work anchored Book Biennial Fair Rio in its main fortress, in its values and purpose. The event has the mission of transforming lives through literature, and the organisers had worked for months to deliver an event with diverse qualified content. The sessions were packed and the controversial episode coincidentally took place on the eve of the programme especially planned for the LGBTQA+ audience. The PR then demonstrated that the attempted censorship was against Brazil, rather than against the event alone, and that accepting such an attack would endanger society as a whole. It would create an extremely damaging precedent for the very recent and fragile Brazilian democracy. In addition to the national and international press, artists, writers, digital influencers, leaders of social movements and civil society institutions were engaged, and added further strength to this attitude. Singer Caetano Veloso and author Paulo Coelho were some of them.

The key message in crisis management was that censorship meant more than a violent attack to the event; it meant a brutal assault on the whole democratic culture. Relationship, proactivity, transparency and advocacy work were the strategies adopted to create a network of advocates of the Book Fai Book Biennial Fair Rio, intended to reach out to citizens and the many different stakeholders of society, as well as the judicial system. Production of positive content and media coverage could not stop. Instead, they would have to be strengthened to prevent a populist onslaught from upstaging the event's brightness. The whole plan was redesigned to add value to the programme. The content was targeted to specific mailings for greater assertiveness and reach to proactive communication. The purpose was to balance up the content published by the media so that there were not only references to the censorship episode when the

The team was divided after the mayor’s attack, on September 5, 2019: crisis management vs. content production to prevent the controversy from outshining the event's advertised programme. A Crisis Committee was called upon and the first statement, released in one hour, stated that there was no censorship. Each stage of the battle was transparently and rapidly communicated to journalists, influencers and the audience at large. Aligning press and legal strategies, 24x7 tracking of news reports and the social media, combating fake news, training spokespeople and producing positive content became routine. We engaged the press against censorship and secured permanent spaces to advertise the event. In 24 hours, we organically engaged 30 influencers (60 million followers) to further promote the programme. Felipe Neto, one of the 100 most influential people according to the Times, was our digital reporter.

The Book Biennial Fair Rio got support from public opinion and the press. There were 7,756 publications — 58% of them (4,518 news reports) mentioned the attempted censorship and highlighted the festival's resistance. Absolutely all the mentions were praising the Book Fair's reputation and 401 news articles published the press statement in full. About 200 articles were published in the international media.

More than 20 influencers were present at the event and others posted suggestions of sessions to attend at the fair. All posts were organic, which showed the plurality and importance of the festival for the country. Felipe Neto bought the 10,000 LGBTQA+ books available at the event and the Book Biennial Fair Rio organisers distributed them to the public as a form of resistance, and the influencer was then to report everything that was happening at the Book Biennial Fair Rio in real time. On the last day of the event, visitors demonstrated against the censorship.

In addition to many figures and celebrities who stood for the event and for freedom of expression, such as author Paulo Coelho and singer Caetano Veloso, some entities that