After Pablo Escobar escaped from prison in 1992 the manhunt moved onto the streets of Medellín. To topple a hidden titan, law enforcement agencies built a convoluted system of radio surveillance and information sharing that spanned the winding streets of the city.

To find their man, U.S. and Colombian forces relied on espionage equipment with origins in World War II and the Cold War— and old school techniques like radio triangulation.  

This system was portrayed within Narcos Season 2. Every time Pablo Escobar called his family or partners, the DEA tried to track him. So, we took everyone to this cat and mouse game by inviting fans to put themselves in the shoes of a police surveillance agent from 1993. To make it as real as possible, we bought an entire hour of airtime at a big Radio Station and took the conversation to Facebook and a hotline.

We bought an hour of airtime from Radio Capital, a station capable of reaching the entire city of São Paulo, with an average audience of 137 thousand listeners.

During the activation, fifty-five thousand people watched a desk and listened to a radio stream full of distortion. Fans… go figure it out.

On Narcos' official Facebook page (like in 1993), people took different sides: some were keen to help the police, others refused to betray the druglord. After 30 minutes of transmission, we hid a hotline number in a police ad. Many called giving clues about Pablo’s whereabouts and others even managed to give the exact location that Escobar was caught in.

In just 1h of live transmission we had an audience of 191,930 (Social + Radio) with a 251% increase in engagement on the Facebook page.

With Escobar Frequency, we brought all the fans to the hunt.

A hunt that everyone knew the ending to, but no one had ever had the chance to be part of.