Short term. Low budget. Need for an aggressive and ambitious PR-focused communications strategy capable of impacting Brazilian workers in more than 5,700 municipalities. Faced with this formidable challenge, CAIXA opted for simplicity. The Bank first set up a bunker staffed with representatives from participating units to assess the setting and engage internal audiences; second, selected a spokesperson and developed a coordinated message (key messaging); and third, invested in the daily production and distribution of exclusive content and Facebook Lives to answer the questions from journalists and mobilize the population. Additional measures, including organizing a network of radio broadcasters and an ambitious interview series involving more than 100 spokespersons, contributed to ensuring initial expectations were exceeded.

Implementation of the PR: on February 14, 2017, CAIXA unveiled the initiative at the Palácio do Planalto, with the President of the Republic in attendance. In addition to an extended press conference and regional interviews with spokespersons from each Brazilian state, CAIXA’s PR team organized the first Facebook Live and kicked off a sustained six-month effort on social media.

Timeline: the PR initiatives ran from February through July 2017. In that time, Facebook Lives were organized and more than 100 press releases and 50 news stories published by CAIXA’s News Department (an in-house channel), in addition to 701 posts on social media.

Scale: during the dissemination phase, the Facebook Live team and another 100 spokespersons relied on strategic information prepared by the PR team to meet the demands of media outlets throughout Brazil and multiply available information.

Tier 1 (media outputs): the FGTS account withdrawal program was heavily covered by the print media during the campaign, netting 22,000 positive news stories and reports on the issue and generating a spontaneous value of approximately R$ 500 million (US$ 159 million). The idea of a state-owned bank using Facebook Lives proved effective, as reflected by the more than 200,000 workers and media professionals that took part in the first broadcast alone and the upwards of 1,000 positive news stories run by Brazil’s major media outlets in just the first 48 hours.

Tier 2 (target audience outcomes): the initial estimated target audience of 10 million rose to 25 million workers by campaign’s end. Total withdrawals reached R$ 44 billion (US$ 14 billion) and directly contributed to a 0.61 p.p. increase in Brazilian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2017.