The hater-behaviour is there since the beginning of the internet, in every comment box. Skol is a big brand, and we communicate a lot. This means we have a lot of room for critics. So, we always had to deal with it.

At some point, someone spread the urban legend that real beer has to be pure malt. Since then, our haters comments follow that same behaviour: hating corn.

Popcorn beer. Corn Juice. Chicken Milkshake. They could be really creatives!

It was not a hard behaviour to map, but the question always was: what can we do about it? We usually tried to educate them, explaining why we use corn, but haters don't seem to mind. So, we gave them what they deserve: love.

We decided to fight back with love, launching a Pure Malt version of Skol, made without corn. The national launching of a beer made based on social reviews. The first ever haters-inspired beer.

And sure, we should be grateful. After all, years of criticisms and cursings took us to that moment: the launching of a light Pure Malt beer. Our strategy was to use those criticisms in order to emphasize the new beer's main attributes. First, we thanked the haters and then we used their good reactions and brand acceptance to communicate with all our targets.

Our haters were everywhere and we couldn't find anything in common between then, beside the fact that they were spending a lot of time bad-mouthing Skol online. To find them, our data scientists used specialized softwares and data intelligence, mapping negative comments. They analyzed quantity and frequency to list the haters with the largest amount of hateful comments.

Then, we sent the haters a pack of the new Pure Malt Skol with their hatred comment glued to it, thanking them. We also designed geolocated billboards placed next to the house of every one of those haters. Our strategy was to communicate with them directly, and use their positive reactions and brand acceptance to communicate with all our targets: beer consumers in general. So, our main goal was to have them posting about it on social media. We also made a lot of digital material following what we were doing.

With a massive work of data intelligence and social listening, we tracked down our 50 biggest haters around the country. Then we surprised them by sending Pure Malt Skol packages with their hatred comment on it, so they would never forget how important they were in the process. All over Brazil, geolocated outdoors right where haters live showed them how much we care: we thanked them directly by making references to the content of their comments. To our biggest hater we even sent a sound truck and an exclusive freezer with all of his comments about Skol printed on it.

As expected, their posts about this spread on the internet and the news. With a little help from our own films and digital material, the entire country, haters and lovers, knew about this launching. And people were ready to taste it.

Skol started a conversation with only 50 haters with a personalized and direct message, but the courage and approach to manage this public made the conversation reach a lot more people. That's how we impacted 4.3 million people with earned media.

During this time we made A LOT of new friends. We reached the main goal of our campaign: 41% of the haters were converted to lovers - which opened people's hearts and minds to talk to us in a fun way, increasing 73% consumer desire. It was the beginning of beautiful relationship.