Prawns are a celebratory staple of every Christmas dinner in Spain. Their consumption during Christmas increases by 200%. An increase that positively impacts private labels, not Pescanova.

During Christmas, consumers go to the Fishmongers rather than the supermarket. They need the fishmonger’s advice, as they don’t know how to identify a good prawn from a bad one.

Pescanova wanted to teach Spaniards how to identify their best quality prawns, but always under the promise: “Let’s keep it fresh”. This entertaining and fun lesson needed not only to be notorious and easy to learn but talked about everywhere. One which would make people choose correctly, without simply taking the fishmonger’s advice of choosing a private label.

They key for choosing quality was easy. If they had moustaches, they were “Rodolfos”, the best quality prawns of Pescanova. Prawns with their moustache intact meant these prawns had been handled and treated with care.

Moustaches make a difference. To prove this unquestionable truth, we decided to shave Spain’s most famous moustache: Vicente del Bosque’s.

The famous Spanish National Football Coach, who led Spain to win a World Cup, hasn’t been without his signature look for over 45 years.

When he lost his moustache, it went viral. Everyone could appreciate that without the moustache, Vicente is not Del Bosque. And the best part of it, they learned the lesson: without the moustache, a prawn is not a Rodolfo.

Our target audience was homemakers who had no clue how to choose an outstanding prawn. They needed advice, education and knowledge to make a good choice during Christmas.

This campaign clearly needed an element, easily identifiable by consumers in order to distinguish the Rodolfos from the white-label branded prawns. An element only present in Pescanova’s best quality prawns: their moustache.

Discovering the importance of the moustache was key, and also creatively fertile. A fresh way to educate consumers about the quality of the prawns that could give birth to an entertaining, fun and close-to-the-people product campaign.

Having Vicente del Bosque’s approval of one of the riskiest proposals in our country’s history made us think bigger. We decided not only to shave him, but to make the idea even more notorious, generating the maximum possible buzz all over Spain. Creating hype, spurring conversations of why the hell Vicente would do such a thing.

A clean-shaven Vicente first appeared in the prestigious Men’s Health Awards Ceremony, catching everyone by surprise. The media, alongside word-of-mouth pushed the campaign and immediately, the Internet went crazy. Thousands of theories started buzzing around for two days.

No one had a real answer until the truth came out in a TV film, where we revealed Pescanova was behind the drastic change of appearance. We also created some snackable content to complete the campaign, making the Internet talk about it longer than expected.

Since the very first moment the campaign was on air, the Internet flipped out and generated a buzz way higher than expected. Crazy theories, memes and tons of content made the campaign achieve more than 138 million impressions and more than €3.2 million in earned media.

But buzz was not only it. We needed to drive sales, and we did. Pescanova’s sales increased by 19%, quadrupling their market share. Lesson learned; consumers were capable of choosing, and they chose Rodolfos.

It became the most successful campaign in Pescanova’s history, and one of the most viewed ads during Christmas with over 12 million views.