Brahma Beer Campaign Offers to Swap Warm Beer for Ice-Cold Brahmitas During Blackouts

In Paraguay's capital city, Asunción beer brand Brahma and agency Grey Argentina, recently ran a campaign to tackle two major issues: stifling heat and constant power outages. The beer brand created a solution with its Brahma Beer Swap campaign. Anyone in Asunción, with warm beer of any brand, could contact Brahma via WhatsApp to exchange their unrefreshing beverage for a six-pack of ice-cold Grapefruit Brahmitas. The only requirement? That their neighbourhood was experiencing a blackout.

By offering to exchange hot beers for cold ones, Brahma Paraguay found a way to help people cope with the heat and power outages while promoting their new Grapefruit Brahmitas product, which wasn’t their most hyped product (yet).

“Problem = Opportunity. This is an idea that not only ingeniously solves a business problem, but also continues to consistently build the 'It's What You See' positioning. If there is something common in summer in Paraguay, it is dying of heat (37 Celsius degrees average) and having the electricity go out for hours. As a result of power outages, many times you can't even drink a cold beer and if in this context we can get people to give a disruptive product a chance, it's a win-win,” declared Bruno Yuli, marketing director of Cervepar AB InBev.

The campaign took place over 15 consecutive days and covered 100% of the power outages caused in more than 30 neighborhoods in the Asunción metropolitan area, exceeding reaching the sampling goal by 125% and managing to increase the buzz on social by 1,500%. Soon, the retailers demand grew by 180.7% and ended up completely sold out of all Grapefruit Brahmitas stacked in warehouses.

From the agency, Juan Ure, ECD, commented: "Taking advantage of the country's situation to refresh people and at the same time solve a business problem is an opportunity that we could not miss, and luckily we have a client who accompanies us and challenges to be always ahead.”

Brahma's beer-swapping campaign followed a related initiative during January and February. The brand offered to cover high energy bills to lottery winners who entered by scanning a QR-code on cans of Brahma’s beer.