The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
Johnnie Walker's 'Errata at 88' restores Alaíde Costa to Bossa Nova history — Cannes GP
Johnnie Walker prints a 70-year-late correction for the Bossa Nova founder left out of Carnegie Hall, then puts her on that stage.
Johnnie Walker · Diageo
What it had to solve
Alaíde Costa helped create Bossa Nova but was left off the genre's landmark 1962 Carnegie Hall concert, reportedly because she was a Black woman. When a 2023 revival of that same show was announced without her, Johnnie Walker's 'Keep Walking' brand stance became a license to repair the record.
How it works
Alaíde Costa helped create Bossa Nova, yet she was kept off the genre's landmark 1962 Carnegie Hall concert, reportedly because of prejudice against a woman who was also Black. The show that carried Bossa Nova to the world left out one of its founders. Sixty years later the omission repeated itself: in 2023 a revival of the same concert was announced, again without Costa.
Johnnie Walker's 'Keep Walking' stance had long celebrated people's journeys, so Diageo Brasil and AlmapBBDO turned the brand into a historian. In partnership with Folha de S. Paulo they published a mock newspaper errata — a correction notice dated 70 years late that put Costa back among Bossa Nova's founders — then went further in October 2023, bringing the then-88-year-old singer to New York to perform at the very Carnegie Hall tribute that had excluded her. She received a standing ovation that lasted more than three minutes.
The correction became the campaign. In the following months Costa's Google searches grew 747%, YouTube interest 318%, Spotify listeners 800%, and invitations to sing on big stages 500%. The work won the Grand Prix in the Entertainment Lions for Music category at Cannes Lions 2024, and the D&AD archive records it as an integrated campaign spanning newspapers, social media, TV, influencers and the Carnegie Hall event.
Why it lands
- The brand identified a concrete, citable historical wrong rather than a vague purpose statement, and used its media budget to correct the public record itself.
- The errata borrowed the authority of journalism: a correction notice in a national newspaper made an abstract injustice tangible and undeniable.
- The campaign closed the loop by placing Costa on the very stage that excluded her, turning a symbolic fix into a real event with a real ovation.
- Every element served the same gesture — the printed correction, the flight, the performance — so the story stayed consistent across earned and paid media.
What it did
Costa's Google searches rose 747%, YouTube interest 318%, Spotify listeners 800%, and invitations to sing on major stages 500%. The campaign won the Grand Prix in the Entertainment Lions for Music category at Cannes Lions 2024.
What you can take
When a brand's values name a real injustice, the most shareable act is repair: make the correction itself the artifact — a printed errata, a stage, a record — and let the gesture do the storytelling.
Since then
At 88, Costa began receiving the recognition her decades of work never earned: sharply higher search and streaming interest, a fivefold rise in invitations to sing on major stages, and a restored place in the Bossa Nova canon. Diageo Brasil and AlmapBBDO won the Cannes Lions 2024 Grand Prix in Entertainment Lions for Music, and the campaign continued to circulate in award archives and retrospectives as a model of brand-led historical reparation.
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