Plaza Vea's Bell's invented absurd theories to explain why its own brand is so cheap

Introduce Bell's, Plaza Vea's own brand of good-quality, low-price products, to a country whose economy had been battered by the pandemic.

Don't defend the low price — mythologize it: three comic films offer absurd explanations for Bell's cheapness, from an accounting error to a child CEO.

Three TV ads directed remotely by Eduardo Gutiérrez of 7 Samurai Films over three days of shooting, with appetite appeal kept intact, rolled out nationwide with social content and OOH.

The campaign ran across Peru's 100-plus Plaza Vea stores with the agency reporting a great response from people; no sales figures were published.

In January 2021, Plaza Vea Supermarkets — Peru's largest chain, with more than 100 stores — did something new: it advertised Bell's, its own-label brand, nationally for the first time. The context was the pandemic, with the chain acknowledging that Peruvian household economies had taken a hit and cheap, good-quality options mattered more than ever.

Instead of a conventional price-and-product pitch, Fahrenheit DDB built the campaign around a question the low price inevitably raises — how can Bell's be this good and this cheap? — and answered it with a series of 'fun and crazy theories'. The three TV spots floated possibilities like the price being an accounting error, or the CEO secretly being a child.

The production shot remotely over three days under director Eduardo Gutiérrez of 7 Samurai Films, a constraint the agency says forced them to keep the fun without losing the appetite appeal a food campaign needs. The work ran on TV nationwide, backed by social media content and out-of-home, and creative copywriter Alonso Castillo reported a great response from people.

The campaign turns the own-label category's core liability — shopper suspicion about 'cheap' — into the joke that carries the message.

It's a first-party-label launch handled as brand comedy rather than a yellow-price-tag ad, which is a rare structural choice in grocery.

The remote, three-day production shows a pandemic-era workaround producing national TV work.

Plaza Vea's own-label push is a documented retail strategy moment: a market leader answering a crisis by leaning on private label.

A price claim nobody believes is better joked about than asserted: let the audience in on the absurdity and suspicion becomes the campaign's engine.

The Theories campaign ran across Peru through 2021 across TV, social and OOH. Plaza Vea's later price-stunt work (2018 World Cup, 2024 Kimberly García bib numbers) shows the retailer kept betting on price-led creative.