• Situation

The previous years have been of the great movement for Colombia's beer category. The appearance of new national beer (Andina) and international competitors, the growth of craft brands, the constant impact of tax reforms, and various changes in the consumption and preference habits of new generations have threatened Poker's beer leadership in different ways.

• Brief

Develop an innovative strategy and campaign to surprise Poker’s consumers while taking over the conversation during Andina's (biggest national competitor) launch.

• Objectives

Increase sales, defend our leadership, and spoil the party for our new competitor's launch.

For years, Poker has positioned itself as the brand that does “anything for friendship,” and if we wanted to bring this promise to life, we had to solve Colombia’s main friendship barrier: Lack of money. To solve this problem, Poker, created the only bank made by a beer brand, dedicated to subsidizing plans among friends in Colombia. Structurally, our main branch office was a perfect replica of any traditional bank; it also had a vault; beer ATMS; and its own currency which was our own bottle caps with money prizes and codes under it, with them friends could pay for beers and plans; also, friends could open savings accounts on our website to save the found codes, and turn them into points for them to exchange those points on products or experiences.

Open a savings account, put money on it, spent, and repeat the cycle, sound familiar? Is the main process on a bank, and that was what we decided to create, of course, in another way, on a friendship way.

Poker opened a bank office and converted the caps into a valuable currency, each cap had money prizes (30 cents to 1 dollar) or codes. Friends could register at our webpage: www.bancodelaamistad.com.co and once at the site, these codes turned into points people could "save" to be redeemed. This allowed young adults (ages between 18 through 24) to buy almost anything they wanted, from beer to vehicles. They even had the opportunity to spend the caps on beer that they could buy in the bank branch office. And of course thanks to this we defeated the biggest barrier when friends want to get reunited to have a beer, lack of money.

We launched the campaign with a series of videos, outdoors, and digital content where we promised the arrival of a new bank and a new currency that would bring financial solutions for Colombian friends.

A few days after our teaser, the country's main banks were up in arms requesting that the Financial Superintendence put down the campaign. Many media covered the news, and we took advantage of the situation to increase the noise surrounding the campaign through influencers that started defending the initiative on social media.

We then opened our "bank's" branch office at the heart of the capital's financial center, using bank's codes and media: The currency was our bottle caps (with money prizes and codes, to pay for beers and plans); savings accounts could be opened (codes could be saved to be exchanged on products or experiences); we also had armored vehicles, beer ATMs, and a vault.

The Friendship Bank became national news and obscured our competitor's (Andina) launch. Plus, it also mobilized the business: Poker reached an 8% increase in sales by the end of the campaign. This represents around 14,5 million additional sold beers vs. the same period the previous year.

We also had:

- 3.000.000 visits to the site.

- 250.000 opened accounts (people registered at The Friendship Bank, a number of subscribers, not even real banks attain in a month). This allowed us to strengthen our first-party data.

- 12.000 attendees at the bank's branch office.

- 25.000 beers delivered through the bank's ATMs.

- 9.000.000 redeemed codes.

- 1 million dollars in free press.

- Poker also dominated the social media conversation (overcoming all of Andina's indicators).

- The hashtag #BancoDeLaAmistad (#FriendshipBank) reached 24,000 mentions vs. Andina’s 6,700.

- Poker and The Friendship Bank reached 20% of the whole country's mentions' share.