Brazil is growing fast. More growth, more jobs, more consumption. Akatu, an NGO for conscientious consumption, wanted to talk about the impact of our consumption habits. Right at the moment when all that Brazilians care about is buying, buying and buying.

So we created the ultimate consumption extravagance: A pretend real estate venture built on the beach. Not at the beach, ON the beach sand itself. This would pose a question: what if to live on the beach you had to make the beach disappear?We made people believe that the block of flats was for real. And taped consumers’ reaction to it. Believe it or not, more than 60% wanted to buy the flat! Our challenge was to make this go national, make it so famous that the whole country would stop, think and debate about our cause.

On a crowded Sunday (nov/22/2009) we built a real sales stand on site, with sales people, a 3D model of the building, plans, banners, flyers, folders, hats, we ran ads, created the venture’s website… Everything a glamorous building launch has to have. We even had an airplane fly over the beach with the message: 'No more crowded beach. Visit our sales stand: Exclusive Beach'. And we also had… hidden cameras.

Most people wanted to buy it. The result was so powerful that Rede Globo, Brazil’s largest TV station, got interested. We made the idea 4 times bigger, with buildings like this all over the country. More sale stands, folders, banners, etc…It all evolved into a news story that opened TV Globo’s main news show two Sundays in a row. Prime time TV for free. The Internet registered viewers opinions. And the discussion exploded on blogs, websites and social networks.

With a limited budget we reached over 130 million people. That’s more than the whole population of France, Spain or Japan. We had authorites commenting on the issue of conscientious consumption. We made a country stop the frenzy of consumption and think about the impact of what we buy. Our idea became content, journalism, entertainment, information, education. Conscious consumption became the talk of the town, no matter which town you were in. And the campaign contributed to the development of a developing country.

We only had a cause, and a big idea. Which eraned us over 9 million dollars worth of media. Not bad for a client that believes in the good use of money. And in conscientious consumption.