The year after the pandemic (2021) was a year of euphoria, reunion, returning to the streets, to the stores and getting back together. So much so that, during 2021, the beer category in Colombia recorded the highest per capita consumption in the last 25 years (52 liters). It was a year of recovery for both the beer category and the stores. However, the opposite was true for Poker: the brand had been dominating in the center and south of the country, but after the pandemic it lost that leadership with two consecutive months of falling sales in the middle of 2021.

According to the most recent economic study of shopkeepers conducted in August 2022 by Fenaltiendas, this segment has not achieved the growth dynamics it had before the pandemic. Immigration, food taxes and shipping platforms are some of the obstacles between shopkeepers and recovery.

Promos de barrio is a design tool, hosted on the same platform where shop owners place their beer orders, that allows more than 500,000 shop owners in Colombia to customize their own promotions and create professional ads with our brand assets.

In 4 easy steps shop owners can choose the color and brand assets, select the product to promote, write the personalized name of the promotion and select the selling price. They can then download it for use on social media or order it printed to arrive with their next beer order.

If the grocer does well, Poker does well. And, after trying different actions for years, this channel, which is so key, is one of the least innovative in the way the company relates to the grocer and the grocer to its customers. This led us to understand that our best ally in the brand's objectives should also be the main extension of the marketing team, taking advantage of all their experience and knowledge of the market, giving them the tools to change the way they promote our beer.

We used a point of constant contact, finding a simple way to share our tools to communicate and connect with the consumer, seeking to strengthen their businesses and sell more. We did not invest in media, but simply in the accompaniment of the sales force to introduce its use. Thanks to this the adoption of this new update was very fast.

In Bees, AB InBev's global platform where shop owners place their beer orders, a digital platform was developed that becomes a design tool that allows shop owners to customize their promotional assets in 4 simple steps with which they can choose the color, select the product, write the name of the promotion and define the price of the promotion. In addition, these assets can be downloaded for use on social media or can be ordered printed to arrive with the next beer order.

- Sales increased by 14%.

- 175.000 promos de barrio sold in the first week.

- 3 million posters delivered.

- New data that elevate our brand insights.

In Colombia there are more than 500,000 convenience stores and it is very popular to go to these places to drink beer. For this reason, shopkeepers have for years created their own promotions based on insights from their diverse audiences and this has inspired them to create their own ads by hand as nationwide promotions do not work for all neighborhoods and stores in Colombia.