In a year of pandemic, with live concerts prohibited around the country, people turned to digital platforms to listen to music and watch the concerts they once enjoyed surrounded by a crowd. Sertanejo music definitely stands out in this scenario. It is the most played, listened to, and accessed music genre in Brazil, being the most popular on Spotify, with 4,3B streams. The campaign’s main goal was to launch a genuine sertanejo song that placed our brand and product on the main music platforms without sounding like an ordinary jingle or a standard branded content campaign.

Sertanejo is a genre that attracts millions of Brazilians. It speaks of people’s main struggles in love relationships: cheating, heart breaks, jealousy and moving on. This is so true that, in Brazil, people even have their own way of calling the genre: “suffering songs”. The sorrow usually goes well with an ice-cold beer. So, how could we bring together the country’s most played, listened to, and accessed music genre with Brazil’s most popular beer? By launching a genuine sertanejo song with a catchy chorus in which the protagonist, who has his heart broken due to a love affair, orders a beer to drown his sorrows. Sure, we have all heard a story like that before, but, for the first time, we would have our brand and product’s name inserted into this context, in a natural and light-hearted way.

Although this music genre speaks of disappointments and unsuccessful love affairs, our goal was to bring fun and entertainment into a moment full of bad news. The connection between jealously, sertanejo music, and beer has always existed. What we did was: we took ownership of this “love triangle” to place Brahma as the perfect beer to make you company in times of suffering, thus becoming part of the country’s cultural habits. The catchy chorus and visual production helped promote our brand and spread the song across all media channels. The brand and entertainment strategy that pervade the song and its activations stitched this relationship together in all available platforms, making the chorus reach the highest numbers across all consumption formats.

We hired Zé Neto and Cristiano, one of the most famous sertanejo duets in Brazil, to play the song. The hit was launched on Spotify and on all radio stations in the country, and the success was so big that it became a major video clip. Moreover, it was recorded at Ambev’s factory! After that, dozens of unofficial versions of the song were organically created, and influencers were hired to launch a dance challenge, which brought even more views and helped increase the buzz all over the country.

The song organically became a hit, being the second most played song on the radio in Brazil. It didn’t take long for unofficial versions of the song to start popping up on the Internet, with influencers spreading out the dance challenge created. That brought never-before-seen results: over 95M plays on Spotify (5th on the Top Brazil playlist); over 150M views on YouTube. On top of that, Brahma became the 3rd most commented brand of the year 2020 and, eventually, we had to increase production to quench the thirst of millions of Brazilians around the country. Furthermore, Ambev sales in Brazil represented 15% of AB Inbev’s total sales volume worldwide.