For beer brands, Carnival (Mardi Gras) is like the Super Bowl - an occasion on which everybody struggle very aggressively for space and visibility on one of the biggest beer drinking instances in Brazil. The territory won during Carnival has relevance enough to influence consumers’ preferences for the rest of the year, turning it into a very important moment - much more so for the market leading brand.

In addition to the need to secure its leader status (in preference and share) during the carnival - and boost sales in the cities where the biggest Carnival fiestas are celebrated - Skol needed to create an initiative that could enhance the value of the brand’s DNA (friendship, parties, fun) for the occasion, plus avoiding the commonplace, thus reinforcing its connections with the young.

1 peculiarity that makes the situation even more challenging is that Carnival is a moment in which the large majority of young people get switched off from the world to submerge into their own fantasies. Therefore, our appeal had to be extremely genuine to hit the young people’s minds, win them over and make them transpose all of this into their Carnival reality.

For the Skol youth, Carnival goes way beyond traditions or culture: it is the occasion when the target manages to connect closely to all those things that make sense to him: friends, scoring and beer.In this context, the cities where Carnival revelry is strongest have become the stage for actual wars where the young become soldiers in a battle where winners have the most fun.We used this inside knowledge to win consumers’ support. We created Operation Skol and provided them with tools to draft their friends on the web and enjoy together the best street-side Carnival in their lives.

‘Operation Skol’ reached the all-time highest levels of participation in an online game in the country, with more than 350,000 people registered, an average time of 8 minutes of interaction with the brand, as well as a growth from 2.6m to 3.7m people on Skol’s fan page.

Through the transmissions on YouTube and Terra, the volume of impacts surpassed the numbers of the biggest TV channel in Brazil, which was sponsored by a competitor. Moreover, unheard-of actions transformed the promotion winners into celebrities: live merchandising on the YouTube and Band Folia transmissions, showing the trajectories and interviews with the winners.