Marketing content directed at consumers often relies on mass-produced items that are mostly irrelevant. Consumers don’t perceive these items as things that were made especially for them. Our challenge was to overcome this perception, and so we decided to do something entirely new: to manually place pieces of original works of art inside copies of Brazilian magazine Trip. Instead of receiving mere reprints, readers were given actual works of art. We had to look for the right materials and to carefully plan the logistics behind our action so we could achieve our main goal: to create the world’s first ad to feature an original work of art.

The launch project for the #urbano perfume demanded extensive research to find the perfect materials, considering aspects such as paint absorption, flexibility and durability of the fabric we used to make the canvases. 2,760 m² of microfiber and 4 m³ of slash pine frames to produce 133 panels measuring 24 x 5 ft. each were used. Then, each panel was cut into 100 pieces, making up for a total 13,300 pieces measuring 15 x 10in. Finally, we placed stickers featuring the product and information about it on the back of each piece, plus the signature of the artist who created it.

We held a 12-hour live stream of the final moments of the event on YouTube. Images were captured with the use of 10 different cameras. People could watch the artists working and interact with them in real-time through Twitter. We had 18 million impressions on YouTube—3.4 million of which were recorded on the day of the event—and an astonishing 42-minute average viewing time (the average for the segment is 2 minutes). On Twitter, we had an engagement rate of 4.14% (the average for the segment is 1%). As a result of all this, the launch became a truly remarkable, successful event, and the product sold 1 million units in less than 30 days.