We turned a local fan behavior into our media plan in order to stand out during the World Cup, in face of our competitor who sponsors the tournament.

Instead of investing money in global media corporations, Guaraná Antarctica did the most Brazilian thing expected: we gave our budget directly to homeowners, who had already painted their walls for the World Cup, to add our brand in their artwork.

We transformed ordinary walls painted by real people throughout Brazil into official media for Guaraná Antarctica, supporting fans, creating a campaign in locations that traditional media cannot reach and winning the conversations.

Guaraná Antarctica is a major Brazilian soda brand that is all about cheering for our "Brazilianess".

We all know that Brazilians love football, but every time we have the FIFA World Cup, this passion intensifies and becomes a cultural phenomenon involving everyone.

Guaraná didn't have a World Cup budget like Coca-Cola, our biggest competitor in the country and one of the main sponsors of the event, but our main objective was to have a powerful World Cup reach and to connect with our people in such a passionate moment.

But as Coca-Cola kept cheering for everyone in the World Cup, Guaraná Antarctica made a campaign 100% focused and targeted to Brazilians and our people's cultural aspects in the World Cup. If Coca-Cola sponsors the tournament, we should sponsor our people.

Our strategy and budget aren't global like Coca-Cola's, our main competitor. While they support every single country, we are all about Brazil.

We wanted to reach places that only a 100% original Brazilian brand could: targeting the most diverse places in our country, which suffered great economic and social impacts during the pandemic.

These communities had the largest number of painted walls in Brazil during the World Cup period. Approximately 17 million people live there, representing 8% of Brazil's population.

We wanted to talk to the main consumer of Guaraná Antarctica: men and women above 35y who are soda consumers. This is a very wide and diverse demographic audience.

And that's what we did. Redirecting 100% of our media budget ($700,000) usually planned for global corporations like Meta, Google and Clear Channel to many Brazilian families, turning this local Brazilian tradition into our World Cup campaign.

With Coca-Cola dominating all media channels during the World Cup due to their sponsorship, we couldn't just run a traditional media campaign for this moment. Instead, we invested in hundreds of Brazilian fans who had already painted their house's walls for the tournament. We asked them to tag the pictures of their walls with #sponsoredwalls and invited them to put our brand on their artwork, shifting this World Cup tradition into an exclusive Guaraná Antarctica campaign: the Sponsored Walls.

Instead of running traditional media, we sponsored a tradition that only happens and gains meaning every four years.

With #murospatrocinados (#sponsoredwalls), people sent pictures of their painted walls on Social Media. And then, Guaraná Antarctica just needed to come over to their places and put our brand and tagline on the wall: "official sponsor of the Brazilian people". We sponsored their walls and paid money to the real people, the same value that we would invest in a traditional campaign.

For 3 months, we had over 300 walls all over Brazil with our brand on them, reaching places that traditional media wouldn't be able to and blending naturally with the surroundings: true brazilian aesthetics became our campaign's art direction.

Once again, Guaraná Antarctica assume its role as a full Brazilian brand, and also the proud sponsor of Brazilian traditions and their fans.

Brazil didn't win the World Cup, but Sponsored Walls was like a trophy for Guarana. Guarana was the #1 most talked-about soda brand during the WC in Brazil in social media, ahead of our main competitor, Coca-Cola, placing #2.

More than 18.8MM people were impacted by the walls and 56 publications and 100 influencers told our story in the press and social media organically.

We created a new media format with a 43% visibility increase over traditional OOH, with over 300 through the 5 regions of Brazil. Our whole budget of $700.000 was redirected to Brazilian football fans from big cities to small villages.

Besides, our Brand map research from Jan'23 showed that by positioning Guaraná Antarctica as the official sponsor of the Brazilian people, made our brand be 35% more perceived as 100% Brazilian brand that stands for its people.

In Brazil, Guaraná Antarctica was competing with THE official sponsor of the World Cup, Coca-Cola, who basically owns every media channel.

Instead of making a World Cup campaign for all the people around the world, as Coca-Cola did, Guaraná Antarctica wanted to talk only to Brazilians, in a 100% Brazilian way, and we found this path in the cultural phenomenon of the World Cup street paintings tradition. So we decided to sponsor people instead of channels, by giving them money for their great media planning and art direction work in painting their walls.

The sponsored walls made Guarana the #1 most talked about soda brand in Brazil on social media and #4 brand in general, while Coca-Cola was the #2 soda brand and #68 in general.

Since the 1994 World Cup, when Brazil won its fourth title of the men's FIFA World Cup, people from all over Brazil have proudly painted their sidewalks, walls, and streets in green and yellow every four years to cheer for the Brazilian national team and as a sign of good luck to our players and supporters.

It's been part of our sports culture ever since then and also a cultural phenomenon that even famous players like Gabriel Jesus from Arsenal participated when he was younger, and it's widely reproduced in the country.

If it's a World Cup year, you can bet that every city in Brazil has at least one painted street as a way of cheering.