The spring of 2015 in North America was especially harsh with recurrent snowstorms. Although everyone knows that Mexico benefits from warm and nice weather, tourists do not consider it a top getaway.

Our challenge was to put Mexico in everyone’s mind in such a memorable way that, whenever they complained about the cold, they would think of us. The objective was to attract sun-seekers to Mexico and increase website traffic to book more trips in that specific period.

The idea was to deliver the message of a perfect getaway when people were receptive. We waited until people got fed up with the cold to invite them to “take their clothes off”, “come melt under the Mexican sun”, and enjoy its “white sand beaches”.

We scouted for the most visible walls and rooftops in Chicago and partnered with a street artist and typographer to craft never-before-seen billboards with 100% pure snow.

The idea was powerful because of the use of a new and clever medium at the right time. Winter would have been too obvious, so we waited until spring: people were even more tired of the cold and the need for a warm-weather holiday became even more relevant to them. These ephemeral billboards lasted around 10 hours each thanks to the low temperatures of the Windy City.

The direct activation generated instant response by increasing by 100% the visits to social media channels and by 30% the visits to the client’s website from social channels. The number of trip information requests directly tied to the campaign was 506 on the day of the launch, a leap of 30% vs. the website’s daily average. This number goes up to +200% if we consider the average requests coming from social media channels. Since it was a very low-budget production, the return on investment was fully positive.

Regarding media impact, the campaign generated strong earned media through online news sites, advertising, art, design blogs and travel publications, reaching 50 million impressions in 29 countries. The making-of video had more than 1 million views across social media channels in the first 2 weeks and generated 20K+ interactions including likes, shares, and comments with a positive vs. negative sentiment ratio of 96%.