The majority of retail category brands in Colombia continue to run their promos in the traditional manner, and campaigns based on mass-participation platforms remain, as yet, undervalued. There has, however, been some exceptions over the last year and a half. Some brands have used Branded Entertainment with the Colombian audience, but without completely leaving behind traditional media, such as TV, radio and print.

To celebrate Homecenter’s 18th birthday, we made the world’s biggest piñata and loaded it with over USD$100,000 of gifts. We put the piñata on display at key points around Bogota for 3 weeks, and encouraged Colombians from our Fan Page to come and break the piñata open on September 18th showing up just with a receipt from Homecenter. Over 1,000 Colombians showed up for the piñata smashing and took home gifts ranging from refrigerators, washers, gift vouchers and even 2 brand new cars. So on September 18th, we held the first party in Colombia where the guests took the gifts home.

•We gained 20 hours of free press on the major networks•We got 256,966 hits on homecenter.com.co•Our Facebook fans went from 8,132 to 21,819 in 4 days•Sales went up by 38% compared to the 2010 birthday celebration campaign•And best of all, Homecenter became the second most relevant brand for the Colombian people