To establish its leadership and continue to grow in Brazil, one of the global BRICS, Caterpillar needed to show all strength of its brands and machinery. To do that the project Giant Sand Castle went beyond B2B and traditional advertising, despite the reduced budget.

We built the biggest sand castle in the world in the most famous Brazilian touristic attraction: Rio de Janeiro. The project entailed more than two weeks of work, six different machines, and tons and tons of sand. The sculpture spontaneously attracted thousands of people to the sight and generated strong repercussion in local and global media.

Vehicles everywhere covered the project, such as Rede Globo (the country’s largest broadcast, reaching 99.6% of Brazilian cities and approximately 70 million homes), CNN, BBC, and tens of others. The return in spontaneous media was of approximately US$ 1,000,000.00.

The project happened in Rio de Janeiro in September 2014 and its construction lasted 15 consecutive days.

The strategy started as a live installation, impacting thousands of people at the sight and on social networks while the castle was being built. The whole process became one of the most watched films in the series Built for It on YouTube. Besides that, Giant Sandcastle was broadly discussed on national and international media, placing Caterpillar in the prime time of all TV broadcasts with a budget much smaller than what would be normally needed for this kind of exposure.

Everything happened as planed and the record was officially announced by Guinness Book’s representatives, attracting the interest of the media.

Caterpillar Giant Sandcastle became a Touristic Spot attracting thousands of visitors.

Besides that the surprising construction became news in national and international media. Adding the mentions to the Caterpillar brand in big internet portals, printed and online versions of the world’s biggest new papers, TV programs and live links, the spontaneous media generated by the project was of approximately US$ 1,000,000.00.

The process was followed up by auditors from the Guinness Book of Records and will be published in the book’s next edition.

In a unique way, Giant Sandcastle made tractors, which are usually highly technical and unglamorous equipment, part of Brazil’s pop culture. It impacted thousands of inhabitants and visitors and millions of people on the internet during the two weeks it lasted.