During the past years, the IVA tax (similar to United States’ taxes) raised to19% for thousands of products. However, in November 2018 the current government launched a new reform that seeked to expand this tax to the basic market basket’s products: eggs, milk, panela, rice, met, vegetables, fruits, and legumes, among others. This awoke the rage within the whole country and the Union Workers called a national strike for Wednesday, November 28th, 2018. A legitimate protest to defend the basic market for millions of families that came out to march. And it was understandable. Imagine this scenario: for a family with a USD 200 monthly income, having to pay 19% on taxes for every market’s basic product was simply insane.

Éxito, the largest retailer in the country, decided to side with Colombians, and as a symbol of protest, decided to immortalize the day of the national strike, by appointing every Wednesday thereafter as "Wednesdays without IVA": one day a week in which Colombian’s can buy over 25.000 products with a 19% discount.

Immortalizing Wednesdays as the day where the whole country really made itself heard.

Since IVA is a tax that affects the whole country's economy, our campaign needed to reach everyone in Colombia. That's why we decided to communicate our promotion through the most popular free distribution newspaper nationwide.

To communicate our campaign, we published our notice in the most popular free distribution newspaper nationwide, so that everyone on the streets could feel our support, turning Wednesdays into the fairest day for all, not by offering discounts, or big prizes, but by siding with the people of Colombia.

With WEDNESDAYS WITHOUT IVA, we raised sales and lowered discounts, meaning that we went from having 25% promotions, to one with a 19% discount. 6% less.

On that great national strike Wednesday, we exceeded sales’ expectations with a growth larger than 24% (we went from USD 322.807 to USD 422.4398. We managed to raise the average purchase ticket to USD 42 on WEDNESDAYS WITHOUT IVA. 54% more than a normal day.

We achieved an average of 1.178 clients, going from 6.545 to 7.723 clients.

We reached an average purchase growth of 35 units, going from an average of 162 to 197 visits.

During the following Wednesdays, we raised the effective clients’ frequency in 42%, going from 67.488 to 158.632 clients.