With Brazil ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic - the country has the second highest number of Covid deaths in the world - carnival, like so many other things, had to be put on hold.

The cancellation amid a resurgence of COVID-19 meant that street vendors, the faces of Carnival, would miss out on what for many is the biggest payday of the year.

To help street vendors that wouldn't have carnival to sell products and to provide for their families, Ambev created a digital platform that allowed these hawkers to sell online to anywhere without leaving their homes. By simply transforming them into unique humanized QR Codes, which basically were personal stores inside of the biggest e-commerce beverage app in Brazil. Each confirmed order was converted into money for the street vendors, resulting in a big social media movement to help them.

To make it possible for these street vendors to sell their products all around the country without leaving their homes, Ambev partnered with the biggest ecommerce beverages app in Brazil, Zé Delivery. Each street vendor QR code directed consumers to their personal stores inside of the app and people could order from anywhere. To help to spread these codes, Ambev used the power of its media and promoted the QR codes of the faces of carnival in OOH, lives of the biggest artists and even projected them in the places they used to work on previous carnivals.

The campaign was launched to communicate the creation of Ambev’s digital platform that would help street vendors to sell products online, since carnival was canceled. After this promotion, Ambev registered more than 20k street vendors on its platform and transformed them into unique humanized QR Codes that could be shared anywhere in social media. Once scanned, these QR Codes directed consumers to the biggest ecommerce beverages app in Brazil where each confirmed order was converted into money for the vendors.

To help to spread these codes all around the country, Ambev used the power of its media and promoted the QR codes of the faces of carnival in OOH, lives of the biggest artists and even projected them in the places they used to work on previous carnivals, resulting in a big social movement to help them.

During 5 days without carnival, the campaign had more than 10MM impressions, resulting in 20k registered street vendors on the platform. They were responsible for more than 300k orders on the biggest ecommerce beverages app in Brazil, all converted into more than R$2MM donated for the vendors.