In Ecuador, over 20 rice brands struggle to attract attention in the supermarket by offering the same "simple white grain”.

We needed to do something to stand out, so we added a simple and tiny incentive to the packaging: “We put amazing prizes in our rice grains”.

The promo brings an exciting adventure to an everyday product by putting people in competition for prizes, in a grain-by-grain quest. It highlights the value and quality of the product and takes advantage of the rich uncharted territory between experiences and direct contact with the product.

Ecuador loves rice.

It’s the key element in all food dishes, absolutely all of them.

Rice consumption per person exceeds 50 kilos per year. It’s the Latin American country that eats this grain the most.

The demand is so high that about 1.5 million tons are harvested every year. For this reason, more than 20 brands are always vying for attention in supermarkets offering the same white grain.

Arroz Super Extra, Ecuador's #1 brand, needed to do something to stay on top and stand out from the rest on the shelf.

As a market leader and pioneer brand for 30 years, Super Extra faces the challenge of maintaining its growth and relevance.

For that reason, it carried out this activation that, through an eye-catching black packaging in the super market, invited people to see their rice grain in a different way, literally.

Situation: High demand for rice has led to the proliferation of new brands that seek to take market share away from the brand with price offers.

Arroz Super Extra, a pioneer for over 30 years and Ecuador’s top rice seller, must maintain its growth and relevance on the supermarket shelf to remain the most popular among the more than 20 competitor brands.

Brief: Develop a promo that highlights the quality of the Super Extra grain and makes it the winning brand at the point of sale, and that our grain is perceived as the best. Whoever tastes, observes and compares our grain with the competition understands that it is unbeatable.

Diego Garcia - General Manager: “Avoid falling into the typical 2-for-1 promos”.

Objectives: Double sales of 400,000 packages of all its brands bimonthly by 2024.

We put hand painted rice grains with special prices on our bags for people to find.

Rice of Glory is a nod to Willy Wonka's golden ticket experience, bringing a disruptive and exciting experience to an everyday product and inviting Ecuadorians to look at Super Extra with “other eyes.” It also demonstrates the rich, untapped territory between exciting, physical experiences and direct contact with the product.

In Ecuador's market, more than 20 brands compete for sales, so we needed the consumer to appreciate the difference of our grain and remain as the top rice brand.

That's why we decided to make a promo based on experiences and not on price. We needed the consumer to spend more time in contact with the product before it was thrown into the pot and to accomplish this we put a tiny but important incentive on some of our rice grains, getting people to compete for "the winning grain".

We launched a TV campaign featuring a series of vignettes showing how far people will go for a grain of rice.

And we complemented it with billboards and fun social media content featuring influencers who warned people to be careful not to put a winning grain of rice in their sushi, rice pudding or fried rice.

We put amazing prizes in our rice grains.

Yes, really.

Each winning grain was meticulously hand-painted with non-toxic vegetable ink by Sri Lankan micro-artist Dayananda, brought directly to Ecuador and distributed in over 200,000 eye-catching black packages that hid the rice inside.

The grains were painted with incredible prizes:

Cruises, air tickets, phones, laptops, trips to Galapagos, TVs and smartwatches.

The campaign was launched nationwide and the containers were placed in the largest supermarket chains of the country for the 2 and a half months that the promotion lasted.

Rice of Glory sold the 200,000 participating packages and generated such empathy with consumers that sales of its classic rice package, which shared space on the shelves, tripled default sales, with over 1 million sold.

- 1 million bags sold in a month during the promo. +100% sales growth vs average pack. (Source Super Extra)

- 4.6 million contacts on social media. (Source HypeStat)

- 2.3 million earned media. (Source HypeStat)

- ROI 3.5: 1 Total (Source Super Extra)

- Overall, the campaign was a great success and managed to enter people every day conversations, but most importantly, we revolutionized the Ecuatorian food category grain by grain.