Nelka Rent-a-car is a middle-size car rental company in Costa Rica.It has a fleet of about 200 cars and 10 offices in different parts of the country.Our client wanted to rent at least 80% of their fleet for the summer season. Our problem was competing against huge advertising investments our competitors were making in order to get most of the foreign tourists.The agency proposed to get hold of a different market, the one niche no one has yet taken advantage of: the national tourist.Although it was something new, and something that has never been tried before, the client trusted us.

Our first step was to create a blog, named after costaricaholes.com. This was an independent site dedicated to the bad conditions of Costa Rican highways and streets. People here were able to complain about the problem and upload their own pictures of the holes on the streets.The blog’s promotion was made through viral mails and mouth-to-mouth advertising took care of the rest.Only after 15 days the site was online, people placed it as one of the top-10 sites of the country, getting around 30,000 clicks and almost 1500 photos were uploaded.

All of a sudden, people started spending time with our idea and with the brand.During summer, after the whole low-budget campaign ended, Nelka rented all of their cars, 95% of customers being nationals. This result was way over our client’s expectations.After the summer, Nelka rent-a-car, has found and taken a hold of a new niche market.