Media is often looked at as a department in an agency, a means to an end, so we took as a challenge to execute this campaign using the idea itself as media. How? By creating a platform with Hiqui, a Maleku influencer, to approach her culture as an invitation to visit her tribe, thereby helping preserve the disappearing smallest indigenous tribe in Costa Rica. Getting to know first-hand all the incredible millenary knowledge impregnated in the products, the communication and Hiqui herself.

Costa Rica is a small country, around 5 million people, but there are smallest groups within our borders, such as the indigenous tribes. The smallest of them all has been endangered for 10 years, the Maleku tribe (around 600 people). And nor the government or the people take action into preserving them, despite being threatened by farmers and miners.

These are hard times for the Malekus, parts of their culture are being prohibited by government entities, making it almost impossible to transmit the old traditions to the Maleku children and many of them are going to be lost in time. Because of this they have been obligated to change parts of their culture like gastronomy, because a lot of animals they use to consume are now preserved by the Government, making them improvise and adapt to the land where they have been for more that 4000 years.

Costa Rica is a country known for being natural, like the Malekus; respecting nature, like the Malekus; conscious on their use of resources, like the Malekus... And yet, having so much in common, they are still strangers to us despite having thousands of years living in Costa Rica. Even the Maleku say the people that visit them the most are from other countries... Costa Ricans, not so much. And in approximately 15 years maybe no one could be able to visit them because that is their countdown to extinction… Unless we take action.

The Maleku tribe has been endangered for more than 10 years in Costa Rica, they are the smallest indigenous tribe in the country and their culture is destined to disappear in 15 years because no other Costa Ricans have contact with them besides farmers and miners occupying their territory.

Hiqui, a Maleku influencer, battles to keep their culture alive through her content, showing their ancestral way of life, inviting the people to visit them. But more than being part of social media, she wants them to be part of Costa Ricans’ culture.

The Rainforest Lab and Hiqui created five products based on the Maleku’s ancestral techniques to use as an invitation to know their culture and visit their tribe. Using Hiqui as the face of the campaign, making sure it didn’t feel as cultural appropriation, but instead as a platform for the Malekus to spread their culture.

How does a beauty brand make a whole country stop ignoring a disappearing culture? By inviting them to be a part of it. Turning ancient culture into Costa Rican pop culture. How? By creating a platform that works directly as a beauty asset, ancestral knowledge spreader and cultural invitation for the people at the same time.

We created five products with Hiqui in the same way which the Malekus traditions dictate, using annatto, turmeric, and cocoa. Including an invitation to visit them, making it very clear that what the Malekus want is for everyone to get to know them and their ancestral way of living. And we made it, the Maleku culture was impregnated into Costa Rican culture in art, music, tattoos, literature and so much more that even the Costa Rican Government recognized them as Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The problem wasn’t simple, Costa Ricans didn't know much about the Maleku culture. The Solution? Even harder, because we had to bring closer to them a culture that was practically invisible in front of their eyes. And how did we make it attractive? By inviting Costa Ricans to be a part of it. We live in a world where FOMO (fear of missing out) is real, so we wanted to make sure not a single Costa Rican wanted to be left out the Maleku culture.

By locating our products in the main shopping malls in the country, reinforcing that with educational content in social media, PR in different TV shows, digital media, influencers and assisting to design fairs we made sure that those 600 Malekus were taken into account through Hiqui and our five products by the most Costa Ricans that we could reach.

We launched the campaign on social media, letting know Costa Ricans they could buy our products by Instagram, Whatsapp and the main shopping malls in the country. Parallel to that we were communicating how the Maleku culture and Hiqui inspired us to release this make up line.

Hiqui and the brand went to various design fairs, so we made a call on our social media as well as Hiqui's to invite everyone to assist, too. That was the kick-off, from there we only went up. Several interviews in TV and radio show, maintaining educational content about the culture and how our products invited people to get to know it up close, on their skins; but also inviting to know it first-hand visiting Hiqui's tribe.

All these efforts translated in visits to the Malekus. And then we made it: the Costa Rican Government declared the Malekus as Intangible Cultural Heritage.

• The Costa Rican Government declared the Malekus as Intangible Cultural Heritage

• 100% of profits to the Maleku Tafa Urijif Ranch

• The Rainforest Lab Production increased X3 in 2 months

• 1M impressions, representing 20% of Costa Ricans reached

• $25k collected for the Maleku community and counting

• WhatsApp direct contacts increased X5 asking for the products

• Social media followers grew by 42%

• Visits to the Malekus +380%

• Searches for Malekus on Google +800%

• Maleku art replicated in tattoos, nail designs, toys, sneakers, murals, t-shirts

• Maleku food replicated in Sikwa Restaurant, #47 Best Latin American Restaurant by The World's 50 Best

• Maleku traditions replicated in goals celebrations in football matches, music, books and audiobooks

A Costa Rican brand created Costa Rican products alongside an indigenous Costa Rican woman. And with those five products impregnated with all the Maleku ancestral culture in them, we achieved so much more than we thought would be possible. Because now, even though in 15 years the Malekus may disappear, their culture will remain so that they will be remembered as what they always were, are and will be: part of the Costa Ricans now that they were declared as Intangible Cultural Heritage by the Costa Rican Government.