Colombia is an analogue country. People still use cash as their main form of payment, being that one of the biggest barriers an e-commerce retailer like Mercado Libre has to face every single day. Colombian's cash goes to small vendors and informal stores, due to the promotions and sales that go around this kind of businesses. For the largest part of the country's population, online shopping is reserved for buying big time: TV's, stereos, computers, video game systems, etc.

The challenge was set with this context in mind: in an analogue country, we needed to show them that e-commerce is meant for much more than big budgets, and that in Mercado Libre the perfect gift was waiting, affordable with whatever bill they had inside their pockets.

The objective was to impulse the growth of christmas sales in 20% versus 2019, attracting 87.000 new buyers and impacting 5% of the country's.

We transformed 2.5 billion Colombian bills into the biggest christmas catalogue ever made, by developing a facebook powered filter that scanned the bill using the phone's cammera and showed the top rated products that could be bought with it.

The e-commerce data showed us high value average purchase versus low frequency. Regardless consumer demographics, the average behavior of the buyer persona of mercado libre faced the barrier of saving the small purchases and small budgets for the offline world, resulting in thousands of missed business opportunities for the brands that sell in Mercado Libre due to miss-information and prejudices.

Using Facebook's very own tools, we developed an idea that worked for the whole platform population in Colombia, nearly 15 million people, challenging those prejudices with the money Colombians had in their pockets.

During December and January the idea was posted in social media, amplified with influencers and regular people that liked the idea, with the largest free newspaper in Colombia placing an Ad with the instructions to use the filters in the hands of everybody. During 2 months we turned the communication of the brand towards the idea, making different campaigns interact with it.

Sales increased in 13 million dollars, representing a growth of 56% versus Christmas

We brought 111.449 new buyers to the brand, 127% surpassing the objective.

In 19 days, the idea impacted 7% of Colombia's facebook population.