We had to promote Tricom's Residential Lines new low rate for calls made to the USA. Instead of using traditional media we decided to take the message and its value and put it in the hands of consumer, literally.

The media spoke about the way a telephone company narrowed the distance between loved ones abroad, generating free press. Tricom had a 58% increase in Residential Lines on its first month, compared to a 13% the year before. By the end of the year Residential Lines had grown 260%.

We took more than 150 thousand 1 peso coins and on a side put a sticker that read: “Start calling for less than this to the USA”. We negotiated with different establishments and a major retail store that moved around 50 thousand people a day to put them and have them mixed with other coins and be given out randomly as loose change to customers at the registers.

The advertising not only reached its target audience but moved around it as consumers kept paying with the coins. It also kept spreading virally from one hand to another, even reaching cities throughout other parts of the country. Background: The Dominican Republic is a country in the Caribbean with a population of 10 million people with more than 1.5 million Dominicans living abroad, 95% of them in the USA.