Grupo El Comercio helps Coca-Cola surpass goals with modern-day Santa branding campaign
Ideas Blog | 16 May 2024
In October 2023, months before Christmas, the ContentLab team of Grupo El Comercio in Peru met with Coca-Cola’s regional agency to learn about the brand’s plans for the upcoming Christmas campaign.
During the conversation, one piece of information caught the attention of El Comercio’s team: according to Coca-Cola figures, 38% of respondents claimed to have lost interest in celebrating Christmas.
How can we recover the spirit of these festivities, traditionally important in the region, through valuable content that emotionally connects with audiences?
Thus was born “We Are All Santa,” a digital content campaign aligned under the concept “The World Needs More Santas” and deployed globally by Coca-Cola.
In search of Santa
The creative concept was built around the stories of Peruvians who embody the values commonly associated with Santa Claus.
But what are these values?
To discover them, the ContentLab team took to the streets, to ask Peruvians what these values are.
Based on this research, ContentLab designed a storytelling strategy to tell the story of six individuals who, each day, revive the Christmas spirit with their actions.
- Carlo del Águila, a firefighter from the Santiago Apóstol 134 Fire Station in Lima, Peru, has been on duty for over 20 Christmas Eves.
- Vanessa Vásquez, founder of Juguete Pendiente, a non-governmental organisation that supports unprotected children.
- Jane Cosar, a visually impaired lawyer, promoted the Guide Dog Act in Peru.
- Diego Villarán founded Alto Perú, a surf school for low-income children and teens.
- Andrea Rivera and Pipo Reiser, founders of SINBA, a local business promoting circular economy from waste.
Reliving the magic
The final act for the campaign included an already consolidated editorial product of El Comercio: Cuenta la Historia, a video programme featuring the famous Peruvian actor Gonzalo Torres navigating through the historical archive of El Comercio, which brings together 185 years of the country’s history to tell unique and curious pieces of our history.
Throughout this special programme, Gonzalo travels back in time to show us how Peruvians used to live the Christmas season and prove that there have always been individuals who have kept the spirit and magic of Santa Claus alive with small actions.
Along with these stories, and to spread the magic of Christmas, the ContentLab team accompanied and reported, through text, videos, and live broadcasts on social media, the events organised by the brand in December, such as parades, public activities, and the traditional tree lighting.
All of this content was hosted on a special site on El Comercio’s Web site, which included graphic design and a user experience designed for the campaign. A social media campaign also helped increase traffic and awareness.
Todos somos Santa was a complete success in terms of outcome: in just six weeks, its videos reached 2.2 million reproductions (113% above the set goal).
The Web site reached 100,000 unique users (25% above the set goal) with 126,000 viewed pages (40% above the set goal).
The campaign also reached 110,000 visits and 3 million people on social media.
“Todos somos Santa” is a creative and storytelling effort that contributed to Coca-Cola’s brand awareness and showed that strategic content effectively drives results.