Corona is a popular beer brand with an ambitious goal: becoming the world's leading brand in oceans protection. Since 2017, Corona's "Better World" project has collected over 1.2 tons of plastic waste, helping clean up beaches from 15 countries. But the brand's toughest challenge was yet to come: launching the project in Brazil with a low budget.

Brazil is the 4th largest garbage producing country and recycles only 1.28% of it. More than 200 tons of plastic waste are left behind on Rio de Janeiro's beaches in a single weekend. But brazilians don't seem to mind. When Corona decided to launch its massive movement to clean Brazilian beaches in partnership with NGO Parley for the Oceans, there was one huge challenge: making people care about this issue.

How could we get the local community, activists, beach goers and even the press to engage with our project and hit mainstream?

If the plastic you throw on the beach could stop you from getting to it, would you think twice before littering? That was our insight: in order to make people actually care about the problem, they needed to see it in an unprecedented way.

We went after one of Rio's most loved and iconic postcards: Ipanema beach. And we messed with it. For three days, we collected all the plastic left behind and used it to build a wall to keep everyone away from the place they loved the most. On a saturday summer morning, Rio woke up to a wall and a warning: "one day, the plastic left on the beach will stop you from getting to it".

First, we got the local community involved: Rio's City Hall and recycling companies along with activists, digital influencers and celebrities joined the movement. For three days, 142 people collect over 150 kilos of plastic waste.

To shock and make Brazilians see the problem with their own eyes, we picked the perfect spot: Ipanema beach. Ipanema is one of the most famous beaches in the world and also the most visited beach in Brazil during weekends, not only by common people and tourists, but also by celebrities and influencers. As we wanted to go beyond talking to Corona's target by impacting the population in a national level, It would be the perfect spot to get massive attention to the matter.

Overnight, we raised a wall 2.5 meters high and 16 meters wide that blocked the main entrance for Ipanema beach with the trash collected in that same place during 3 days of work. The timing couldn't be better: a sunny Saturday morning. The place was packed. Surfers, tourists, beach goers and influencers that were there to spare time started spreading content all over social media. And we even got Gabriel Medina, A-list surfer, to tweet about it. Of course, we also invited selected media outlets that usually don't talk about Corona to make sure the wall was everywhere.

In the following day, Corona posted a 45 second video sharing the whole story on its social networks.

The wall impacted 24 million people and generated 6.6 million earned media impressions. The story made it to international news and Corona was mentioned by specific press that never talked about the brand before, going from culture and behavior media outlets to fashion and sustainability vehicles. 99% of social media comments about the project were positive and Corona brand mentions increased 147% in the period. More importantly, the wall made Brazilians care about the future in the present.