Kids are born without any kind of prejudice; they only inherit them from their parents. To check this out, on December 23rd 2015, Gran Estación, one of the most important shopping centres in the country, decided to change Christmas most representative icon, Santa, for others: a gay Santa and an African American Santa with physical disabilities. With that, we caused quite an impact in all the parents that went along with their children, also teaching them a lesson of inclusion: kids only see Santa.

In one of the most important shopping center in the country, we changed the traditional Santa who sits there every year for other Santas: a gay one and an African American one with physical disabilities, so we could share a message of inclusion. When the children saw them, they ran and tried to hug them immediately, because they don’t have prejudices, they only inherit them from their parents that reacted with rejection of what they were seeing. This was all documented with hidden cameras and uploaded to Social Media.

Our most important result was the change of attitude of the parents in the shopping centre during the action; the message hit them directly because their own children delivered it.

We achieved awareness for the brand and a large amount of followers in Social Media.

It’s relevant for this category because in Christmas we managed to spread a message of inclusion by a direct action that caused an impact in our target group, the parents, because those who articulated the message and acted as the media to deliver it were their own children. It caused an immediate reaction and some reacted in a positive way and others, mostly, in a negative one. That evidence proofed that what we were communicating through the action called “The Same Santa” was right. It generated noise and opposed views in several media.

The target group we wanted to reach and share our message with were the parents. That’s why we used their children as the media to give the message in a season wit great importance for them, Christmas, and in a shopping centre that gathers many families this time of the year.

Colombia is a conservative country where most of the population is still homophobic and racist. The worst is that they teach those prejudices to their kids; kids are born without them, they only inherit them from their parents. This causes that from an early age they act this way, and when they grow, the words tolerance, respect or diversity are not in their vocabulary, as it happens with many adults in our country. One example of that is that just on April 7th 2016, same-sex marriage in Colombia was approved.