How DDB Colombia and the BBVA Bank Took a Whole Country’s Breath Away

On July 7th, 2017, Sofía Gómez, a Colombian athlete sponsored by BBVA, dived 84 meters into the sea to establish the new apnea World Record, a little known and practiced sport in the country. She managed to hold her breath for 2 minutes and 45 seconds.

 

In order to turn a record from an unknown sport into a entire country of personal records, DDB Colombia used the most important newspaper of the country, El Tiempo, to publish an ad with a story that took the same amount of time to be read as the time that Sofía spent underwater. With this action, they challenged Colombians to read it while holding their breath, mark their own personal record on the page and then post a picture on their social networks adding the hashtag #BBVAconSofia (#BBVAWithSofia). The ad also invited people to visit a site where they could read the text, mark the time they read without breathing and share their record in their social networks.

 

The campaign reached 1.9 million readers in 24 hours, achieved 16 million impressions on social networks in just a weekend and was a trending topic for an entire day.