Guatemala anti-advertised in Times Square: 'come to a place without billboards'

Sell and promote tourism of Guatemala, a small country with unexplored natural beauty, in the one place on Earth people travel to see advertising.

Use the saturation against itself: a plain Helvetica line — 'Now come to a place without billboards' — then reveal Guatemala's hidden river.

Chief creative officer Ricardo Mendoza's team hacked a screen with the message 'Now come to a place without billboards', set in Helvetica — an iconic feature of New York signage — on a plain white background, then revealed a scene of the Semuc Champey river with the line 'Come to Guatemala', nudging curious tourists to collect the destination on their social feeds.

The activation reached 5.7 million people and won a Gold award at El Ojo de Iberoamérica, which the agency hoped would prove Latin American ideas could surprise the world's festivals.

For many advertisers, reaching Times Square is a dream — the only place in the world where people travel to see advertising. The Guatemalan Tourism Institute (INGUAT) asked d4 McCann Guatemala how a small, beautiful country could sell itself there, in one of the biggest media markets on the planet.

Chief creative officer Ricardo Mendoza and his team concluded that Times Square's greatest strength was also its greatest weakness: saturation. So they proposed to 'hack' one of the screens with the message 'Now come to a place without billboards'.

A quick scene of the Semuc Champey river — 'where the river is hidden downhill' in Yucatec Maya — followed, with the phrase 'Come to Guatemala', inviting viewers to think of the country as their next destination. The team admitted feeling the fear of advertising something simple amid so much digital overproduction: the way taken was the least expected one, anti-advertising a destination with no broad avenues or skyscrapers, just nearly unexplored natural beauty.

The message was set in Helvetica, an iconic feature of New York signage, on a white background. It reached 5.7 million people and took Gold at El Ojo de Iberoamérica — an award Mendoza hoped would show that going back to the basics of a well-conceived strategy never goes out of date.

The media buy and the message are the same argument: this destination is everything this square is not.

Helvetica and white background read as native New York typography, so the switch to wilderness lands harder.

Simplicity was the risk the client had to be talked into — and it became the story reporters told.

In the most cluttered medium on Earth, the anti-advertisement — an absence where everyone else buys noise — is the only thing left that stands out.

The idea began with the El Ojo de Iberoamérica Gold; the source reports no further rollouts.