We wanted to transform the Skol Beats site from a simple site offering service and coverage for the festival into the largest entertainment-oriented portal sponsored by a single brand in Brazil. We wanted to do it fast. We invested in a great editorial team to produce first-class content, and worked with innovative ways to build audience. We made a deal with MSN Brazil to have Skol Beats as an editorial channel. Our media strategy relied mostly on social media and viral invitation to the site, anchored on the Skol Beats 2008 Co-Creation promotion, where people could chose date, venue, format and artists for the festival. We created tools to make it easy for people to invite friends using email, Windows Live Messenger, Twitter, Orkut, Facebook and other social networks. People would come to the site because of the festival, find great content and get hooked.

In less than a year Skol Beats became a respected provider of entertainment news, being cited by regular news vehicles as a source. It has on average 400,000 unique visitors and more than 1.2 million page views per month, comparable to established online vehicles targeting the same audience. We surpassed by 50% our goal of 50,000 registered users in the portal and sold out the 15,000 tickets to Skol Beats 2008 two weeks in advance. The cost for each brand contact at Skol Beats Portal is 500 times lower than at the festival alone.