In the last couple of years, there is been a trivialization of narco culture thanks to Tv series, documentaries & Narco tourism, that constructs a superficial sense of admiration, pride, and support for Pablo Escobar and Colombian cartels.

We decided to capitalize this insight and allure through social influencers the targeted audience to our e-Commerce, a platform that is not normally used for this purpose, and change their perception by showing them the reality behind entertainment: there are more than 10.000 families whose lives were damaged by narco-trafficking. It’s not fictional for us.

Pablo Escobar died 27 years ago, but Colombians still carry his stigma, especially since in past years, there is been a revival of the narco culture thanks to new Tv series, documentaries & Narco tourism, which resulted in an increasing sense of admiration, pride, and support for his figure. We were approached by Colombia con Memoria Foundation to bring awareness to their cause and to increase donations to keep helping with orientation and aid for legal fees to the more than 10.000 families whose lives were damaged by narco-trafficking.

We had a massive challenge on our hands, for the survival of the Foundation we needed the help of foreign donations, but for achieving that objective, they had to understand the reality behind narco culture, understand the suffering, death, disappearances, attacks, and pain of families who had victims in the narcotrafficking war. We decided there was no one better than real families to explain it, so we created a platform where their stories could be heard, stories that entertainment failed to tell.

This initiative achieved the economical goal it had, but we hope that it can go beyond that, because if we see one less person with Pablo Escobar’s t-shirt on, some girl less that idolizes the narco culture, or some child who doesn’t want to be like them, our job is more than compensated.

When we were approached by the Foundation the relevance of the problem was clear, in the last couple of years, there has been a revival of the narco culture thanks to a new entertainment trend that showcases and trivializes what had happened in Colombia. To change this perspective, we decided to get inside the belly of the beast and allure our main target to a fake e-Commerce with appealing products. Every design was thought-out and internally tested until we choose the final 200 products.

Our main challenge, in the beginning, was that when we were creating the products without the testimonials, they were too alluring and we were worried that the key message could be lost, but the day we record the testimonials we become at ease, the stories are so raw, strong, and meaningful that we knew they were game-changers.

We launched Narcostore worldwide, an official e-Commerce with more than 200 specially designed products inspired by Pablo Escobar and the Colombian Cartels, but it worked as a decoy. When people tried to buy the products, they were confronted with the reality behind narco-pride: testimonies of the victims' families of drug trafficking with a clear message, to reflect on what’s behind the glorification of the narco culture and instead donate the same amount to the Foundation.

On the first day, we had 46 million impressions, more than 230.000 new users from 163 countries, with a bounce rate of 39%. And more importantly, a 200% increase in foreign donations.

The campaign lasted a week on Social Media, but the e-commerce page is still available and still gets organics visits from all over the world. Increasing the average time spent on it to 18 min.

Colombia con Memoria Foundation helps with orientation and aid for legal fees to the more than 10,000 families whose lives were damaged by narco-trafficking, and even though they have the most inspiring purpose they were on the verge of closing. They understood that to change that situation they had to change their approach and not only appeal to the hearts of Colombians but foreigners too.

That inspired our campaign because to do so, it was fundamental to explain to foreigners what Colombians knew all along, behind every TV series ’character, movies, and entertainment there is suffering, death, disappearances, attacks, and pain of real families. It’s not fictional.