Recent years have been a real challenge for advertisers in Ecuador. A new communication law was recently passed by congress. This law, among many things, restricts and limits typical commercial advertising. But the situation it is even more difficult for media. With this law, nowadays a lot of people believe that content has excessive control and regulations. In fact, there have been social complaints about freedom of speech. This situation has made creative agencies challenge the status quo and look for new ways to promote brands by naturally placing messages and brands benefits in different ways.

In order to promote internal tourism in Ecuador, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Tourism asked to develop a campaign that would prove that Ecuador is a top tourist destination

The country has everything to offer tourists, yet Ecuadorians choose to travel elsewhere and rarely travel inside. Our challenge was to cause a change of perception among Ecuadorian tourists and convince them about Ecuador’s beauties.

We aimed to make Ecuadorian tourists experience the beauty of our country by making them believe they were elsewhere. We invited a group of 40 travelers to an exotic destination in “Costa Rica” but in reality we landed in Tena’s airport in Ecuador. We disguised the destination as a Costa Rican village and the travelers had a great time rafting and bathing in the river. After the trip, we surprised them by revealing that they had never left the country.

After this stunt, the travelers were felt proud and pleased to know they could experience world class tourism in their own country.

Their experience was published online, which caused thousands of views, a small diplomatic conflict among countries and Ecuadorian tourists convinced about the great adventures Ecuador had to offer.

Our target were Ecuadorians who generally travel outside the country when going on vacations. Our goal was to change their perception about the country and increase the level of internal tourism among this target group.

We researched among the top tourist destinations for Ecuadorians and Costa Rica was amongst them. Costa Rica and Ecuador share very similar climates and attractions. So we decided to leverage the attractiveness of our country’s landscapes, with the name of another country that sounded a little bit more “exotic”.

We published the story right before a national holiday. The campaign even provoked a minor diplomatic argument between Costa Rica and Ecuador which was quickly solved making an internal campaign into a global issue.

We received 19 MILLION MEDIA IMPRESSIONS

and 1480 MEDIA PLACEMENTS including coverage from CNN, Yahoo News and Mashable.

The ministry of tourism held a press conference along with TAME, the airline involved. The CEO of TAME announced that the even the routes to Esmeraldas and Manta (2 unpopular destinations) had been sold out in a matter of days after the release of the story.

Finally,sales for domestic flights rose by 17% as compared to last year’s holiday. This proved the positive promotional impact the campaign had among Ecuadorians and their perception towards internal tourism. fuente del resultado

Every traveler chose to stay in Ecuador for the Holiday, proving the experiential campaign successful.

In order to promote internal tourism in Ecuador, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Transportation and tourism asked to develop a campaign that would prove that Ecuador is a top tourist destination.

Ecuadorians tend to travel outside the country because they perceive foreign destinations to be better than their country’s.

So instead of using traditional media to advertise tourism, we decided to invite 40 travelers to experience tourism in Ecuador by making them believe they were in another country.

We had disguised the whole space and made sure that they thought they were actually in Costa Rica. We disguised the airport, used Costa Rican immigration cards, set up souvenir shops, Costa Rican car plates and traffic signs. The travelers had a great time and were convinced they were in the Central American country.

On their way back to the airport, we revealed where they actually were and told them they had never left the country.

We communicated out message through the content of the journey, they experienced it first hand.