Though i'm originally from Spain i've spent the last three years of my life living in Mexico, so the first time I asked Martina about writing for Adverblog she told me that it would be nice reviewing a lot of digital cases coming from Central and South America, as to have a global vision of digital advertising in Adverblog.
Not that I haven't tried but besides a few things coming from Brazil, I haven't found anybody in this region consistently generating first-class digital work (but maybe there is! if you think you or your company is doing it and you work in Central/SouthAmerica please drop me a line to dani.granatta AT gmail DOT com !)
Well, the thing is that last week I was part of the jury for the first IAB Conecta Awards organized by Mexican IAB and I went to Mexico City for the voting, kind of prejudiced about what we were about to see. But once there, and in really good company, we found a few works worth to be noticed. I specially liked this one called "Rockea duro / construye tu futuro", done by Substance for UVM, one of the universities of fastest growth here in Mexico.
Planned for prospecting new talent in high school before they choose which college to go, it also tried to build some awareness for the brand under the concept "Rockea duro / construye tu futuro" ("Rock hard / build your future") and using the music as leitmotif, proposing a rock contest in which users could send their songs, posters or reviews and then all the audience could vote to choose some finalists. From them, a jury picked up some winners who would be awarded with some paid scholarship programs when going into UVM college.
But if you're in high school and opt to be a viewer not a participant in this thing, it's easy to think that a college that rewards talent in that way should be kinda cool, so maybe you start considering it as an option for your academic future.
I like not only the concept but also the way in which the target audience (16-18 years old teens) is reached through the channel (87% of the people reached belonged to that age range, which is a HUGE amount of potential new students) and then how the channel (MySpace Mexico in this case) is involved as a partner, not only as an anonymous observer, just hosting content.
And after all of that, a final concert was performed in one of the college campus with reknowned mexican bands, where you could go just by joining "Rockea Duro/Construye tu Futuro" as a friend and using it as an "entrance ticket".
Secret Show Fest
So 85 bands after (and that's a lot, because they weren't seeking a label contract, but studying for free) and more than two thousand new friends of the college profile in MySpace, it resulted in more than 10% of favourability and almost 2% of clickthrough for the banners of the campaign, which speaks about how accurate was this strategy for the needs of the UVM brand.
