Contagious Spotlight on Latin America: October 2021 /

A bottle of Malbec that featured in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare caught the attention of Argentinian fans of the game because it looked similar to those produced in the country’s famous winemaking province of Mendoza.

So winery Amfíbio Vinería and Buenos Aires agency The Juju decided to create Wine of Duty, a real wine inspired by the game.

Matrix Effect / Wine Of Duty reverses the traditional logic: a wine was born as part of a game to then become a real life product. The frenzy around the release of Matrix 4 makes it a perfect time for brands to explore the barriers between fiction and reality.

Cultural relevance / Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is one of the most famous games in the world — but the Malbec bottle went unnoticed by most of the game’s fans. A specific group of users’ strong sense of identification with a traditional regional product reveals the power of cultural connection even within globalised platforms – and Anfibio Vinería understood exactly how to take advantage of this feeling of belonging.

According to the Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics (IBOPE), a person commits suicide in Brazil every 46 minutes. To raise awareness and broaden the debate around the topic, the CVV (Center for Valuing Life), a social organisation working to prevent suicide, joined a group of Brazilian advertising professionals to create the #ConteúdoSensível campaign.

By simulating a social media post with violent or sexually suggestive content – a blurry picture with the message ‘Sensitive content: this video may contain explicit or violent content’ shared on Brazilian celebrities and influencers’ official Instagram accounts – "#ConteúdoSensível" used people's curiosity to draw attention to the post’s caption about the importance of active listening in suicide prevention. Brazilian celebrities such as actor Lázaro Ramos, TV host Ana Maria Braga, and singer Ivete Sangalo all took part in the campaign.

Arousing curiosity / No one expects their favorite celebrity to share an explicit content post. According to one of the campaign's creators, Eduardo Cabral, a strategist at WMcCann, the promise of ‘leaked’ content is more enticing than traditional institutional campaigns. ‘We hacked social media to earn a rare resource: people's attention. When an explicit content video is shared by a celebrity, it generates curiosity. We took advantage of this attention hook to get this message on mental health out,’ he said.

Marketing for the common good / "#ConteúdoSensível" marks the third year in which a collective of Brazilian advertising professionals carried out campaigns for CVV. Contrary to the negative perspective that advertisers often get from the public, this campaign shows that marketing can be used to talk about serious issues and bring forward relevant social causes.

Mexico is a strategic market for the gaming industry: 72.3 million Mexicans describe themselves as gamers and around 11.1 million watch eSports tournaments.

On International Gamer Day (celebrated on August 28th), McDonald's, together with DDB Mexico, launched McBites for Bits, a campaign aimed at Twitch streamers that offered rewards in Bits, the platform's official currency, for each bite streamers took of their snacks while live streaming content.

Being part of a community / As with the Most Valuable Promo campaign, McBites for Bits infiltrated the gaming community – an ad-averse group – using its own language. The livestreams weren’t exactly what audiences had come to expect, but  they still featured their favorite streamers and fully embraced the platform’s logic.

Eating with your eyes / A mix of tasting and product activation, McBites for Bits explored a visual resource to generate interest in the target community, taking advantage of the fact that the public knows very well what a McDonald's snack tastes like. It was a creative way to fuel the craving for hamburgers and keep the brand relevant in Gen Z conversations.