Poker, the beer of friends since 1929, had to reach more consumers than ever (men and women ages 18–24) due to the sales drop presented in 2021. On the other hand, its consumers are those who love, follow, and even try to imitate their favorite celebrities, they consume all of what their favorite celebrities use, but for a local brand like Poker being next to them is impossible due to budget. So, the challenge was to come up with an idea that would have a large media impact in terms of reach and positioning while remaining on a tight budget to accomplish some ambitious objectives:

- Reach: +120 Million people reached.

- Social media interactions: Increase of +100% compared to benchmark.

- Consumption past 4 weeks: +1,5 p.p.

- Trial (age 18-24): +2 p.p.

- Differentiation attribute: Increase of +5p.p.

The most effective adoptions of brands in the world have something in common, the endorsement of great celebrities, but for a local brand like Poker, being next to them is impossible, due to budget. So, as the beer of friends, we created a new influencer marketing strategy; "Influencers’ Friends," in which, instead of recruiting big and famous influencers, we recruited their best friends.

We enlisted the best friends of the country's most famous celebrities; they are not famous, but they are always with them, regardless of their fame; so, we signed up Andrés Lopez (Jbalvin's BFF), Daiky Gamboa (Karol G's BFF), Ivan Ceballos (Juan Quintero's BFF), and more to become the new Poker Gang, achieving great results thanks to the content they made alongside their best and famous friends. Finally, Poker was next to the biggest celebrities and achieved unprecedented reach by reinventing the use of influencers on social media.

Our core audience are men and women between 18 and 35 years old, who like to drink beer often and meet with close friends in spaces where they can show themselves without filter, they are active in social networks. And if we are learning something about the positioning of products and brands in digital times, it is that the shortest way to achieve a great impact is with high-level influencers. According to a study by Launchmetrics, influencer marketing grew by 42% in the last year, resulting in approximately $15 billion in sales worldwide, which demonstrates its effectiveness.

That is why we knew that the big influencers were the ones who could bring us the best results; however, since we could not hire them due to budget, we had our eureka moment: Great influencers have friends who are always with them and enjoy their visibility.

This campaign was aired for 2 months, during which we followed these steps:

1. Search and selection of the new Poker gang (influencer marketing): Based on the main interests of our audiences, we found those celebrities who would connect perfectly with the different segments.

The problem was that a local brand like Poker didn't have the budget to pay them. That's why we didn't sign up headliners, top soccer players, or even presenters; we signed up their best friends, the friends that represent pure friendship.

2. Our influencers' friends stories of pure friendship (content, Instagram Stories): They generated content in which they told stories with their best friends (celebrities), and thus the audiences would know the intimacies of their favorite celebrities watching them having fun always with a poker on each content.

This idea let us achieve historical results for the brand according to the main objective of the campaign:

+USD10 million saved in celebrity endorsements.

Reach: +560 million people were reached on social media.

Social media interactions: +1200% increase in social media interactions.

Consumption past 4 weeks: +4,6 p.p.

Trial (age 18-24): +3,5 p.p.

Differentiation attribute: +16.3p.p on the differentiation attribute, which means that for our consumers, we are a brand that leads the way in the category.