More than 2.3 million people use Madrid's subway every day. However, for brands, subway media is not as relevant, effective, or attractive as regular street OOH advertising. Consequently, in 2023, subway ad investment decreased by 7%.

Because of this, JCDecaux wanted to make a campaign to convince brands that this media truly works and made them to reinvest in it again.

One of the most important objectives of this campaign was to make the idea measurable, in a simple way to show the results of this media.

Media printing aside, we had a very limited budget ($10,000). However, we could use all the media that the brands had not bought in the Madrid metro.

We decided to use the unsold OOH spaces to demonstrate the power of the medium. How? With Marina Prieto. A lovely 100 year old grandma who was publishing content on Instagram, but with only 28 followers. If we could make her go viral thanks to our media, we would prove to all the brands that they could also get the notoriety they needed with us.

For this reason, we placed the 54 posts from her Instagram account throughout the Madrid subway. No CTA, no brand behind. And we got what we expected. Everyone started talking about that mysterious lady who was all over the subway.

And when the conversation was at its height, we showed the reason behind the campaign at the Effie Awards, the gala where the main advertisers get together, directly reaching our target audience.

The campaign strategy was to create an idea that could generate a connection with people. To do this, we wanted the idea to breathe in one way or another humor and emotion, feelings with which to achieve this connection with the public.

This is what made us choose Marina Prieto. Although we saw other profiles, we felt that the one of a 100 year old lady had more potential, both for her and for us.

On October 10, 2023, we placed Marina Prieto's 54 posts in the empty advertising spaces of the Madrid subway.

The campaign was on air for 4 weeks. Four weeks in which we managed to get an outdoor media campaign in the Madrid subway to be mentioned in more than fourteen countries.

On October 27, 2023, we took advantage of the fact that everyone was talking about our campaign to reveal at the Effie Awards in front of Spain's top CMOs who was behind it all.

Over the following weeks and months, we saw the results reflected. We achieved more than 185 new brands and doubled the brands' media spend.

The campaign received results for both Marina Prieto and JCDecaux.

Marina Prieto results:

Marina's IG account grew +39285%.

+1,5 M views on Marina's profile

Marina's engagement +13405%

Mentioned in +14 countries

JcDecaux results:

185 new brands

x2 media investment

Record bookings for JCDecaux