The Little Guy Inside the ATM

From Peru, a smart creative idea to get people’s attention on a problem that affects seven out of ten children in the country: illiteracy. A man was placed inside an ATM machine to deliver the message in one of the moments when people is simply forced to read what’s on the screen. At the same time they also made it possible to make an immediate donation to the BBVA Foundation’s Reading is Being program.

Actually they didn’t really placed the man in the ATM, but rather they filmed an actor who appeared after showing on the screen an image that was just impossible for consumers to read. The effect is still pretty good and the campaign reached a pretty large audience throughout the country.

I think that that not placing the man for real in at least one ATM machine is a miss, as this could have generated a lot more buzz. But at the same time I appreciated the choice to go for a broader yet more one to one distribution of the message and not just for a standalone PR stunt. Probably a combination of the two would have been ideal.

The agency is Volver d6, Lima, Peru.