The 2020 US elections was the first time a lot of Hispanics were going to vote by mail. Not only did this make things more difficult for an already complicated voting process, but there was a lot of misinformation and fake news surrounding it as well. This overwhelmed Hispanic voters from wanting to go to vote.

So, the mobile chat app WhatsApp partnered up with Vote.org and developed chatbots that helped with voter registration, simplifying the voting process, and verifying misinformation. People just needed to send a text message to interact with them.

We had the tools to get more Latinos to vote, but we didn’t have a way to talk to them in a relevant way. So, we needed to find a clear political campaign that broke through the clutter and apathy.

Hispanics believe in astrology more than any other ethnic group in the world. We found that their engagement with astrology was a powerful cultural tension with the voting gap, because voting is a much more tangible way to change one’s future.

So, WhatsApp’s creative idea was simple: bring back from the dead the only person that Hispanic voters would listen to, Walter Mercado—the most iconic astrologer in Hispanic culture of all time, and have Walter deliver one last horoscope to the Hispanic community.

This last horoscope promised Hispanics a prosperous future, but only if they voted in the 2020 US elections. Because voting is the best way to make their future reality.

50% of Hispanics did not vote in the previous US election. We knew that these people must’ve grown up watching Walter Mercado on TV, because these people are above the ages of 18. And coincidentally, 50% of Hispanics in the US also use the mobile texting app, WhatsApp—more than any other ethnic group in the country.

We gathered data from Walter Mercado’s 30 years in TV and radio and stitched together 12 horoscope films.

These films were custom-built horoscopes for each zodiac sign, and we targeted eligible Hispanic voters based on their sign and date of birth (nearly half of the entire Hispanic population).

We then redirected people to WhatsApp, where they could interact with the chat bots that we developed inside the app. By simply sending a text message to these bots, Hispanics could register to vote and verify misinformation.

By analyzing over three decades of Walter’s career, out of that data (over 2,500 hours of footage), we built 12 films. Each one was a horoscope tailored to the 12 zodiac signs, starring a deceased Walter Mercado brought back to life. Walter became an influencer for the 2020 US elections, encouraging Hispanics to use the chat bots that WhatsApp and Vote.org developed to vote.

We launched Walter’s last horoscopes nationally in September, across all Facebook Inc platforms on a national scale, specifically targeting Latinos based on their zodiac sign so that they could receive personalized messages. They ran as carousels, stories, posts, videos, and more.

+2 Million Engagements with bots to fact-check and register to vote

Reached 40% of all the US Hispanic population

We created the largest fake news debunking bot to date

Latino voting increased by 300%

2,500 hours of analyzed footage