In 2018, the situation of the country was rather unstable due to political and social conflicts that resulted in a loss of hope for a better country. There hence arose a lot of pessimism and disappointment among the population. In contrast, the moment that combined the country’s optimism and efforts in the pursuit of a common goal was when we learned of the return of Peru to the World Cup after 36 years, to which the brand contributed by promoting a message of Unconditional Support and, despite a short-lived participation in the championship, after a few weeks Peru won Best Fan Award. This therefore meant that there was hope, that good things could happen even in our country and that bad streaks could be broken to come together and celebrate as a society.

As Peruvians we often focus on the negative side of things, on what Here We Can’t have or on what Here We Can’t do. We discovered that the surname Aquino (Herewecan’t) could be given a positive spin by slightly changing it to AquiSi (HereweCan) and so tell people that “Here We Can do it”.

And the way to get attention, was changing the name of his shirt in a soccer game: So people were going to start talking about that. Then, we would reveal in social media, the reason behind it.

During 2018 Peru experienced times of social pessimism and political conflict. Movistar is the Peruvian National Soccer Team’s official sponsor. And being the national team’s sponsor also means being the country’s partner. We thus decided to rely on the idea of changing the surname of soccer player “Aquino” (Herewecant) to “AquiSi” (HereweCan). And we did it on the player’s shirt in an official match. This slight modification gave the country a positive connotation and, in an organic way, caused the most traditional media to talk about the optimism and effort all the citizens are capable of. The results? Each reporter made the message their own and encouraged all Peruvians to stop believing that “Herewecant” do it and start thinking that “Herewecan” do it.

Two stages were planned:

Intrigue Stage: Activation and the player’s social media

We took advantage of an important match Pedro Aquino was playing in Mexico and arranged for him to appear wearing a shirt featuring the name “Aquisi” (Herewecan) instead of “Aquino” (Herewecan’t). This way we got people talking on social media and the news about this unusual event and we had them asking themselves why he had done it. In addition, we asked the player to also make this change to his surname on his social media accounts.

Unveiling Stage: Digital

After the talk generated on social media both nationally and internationally, we launched a video on Movistar’s own accounts unveiling the message that Aquino had wanted to convey through this action and let everyone know that it had all been promoted by the brand.

Strong coverage and high bounce rates in the media were achieved in an organic way, both locally and internationally. 2.2 million views and 1.53 billion impressions.