The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2022–2023
Mercado Pago invests Big Brother's prize so inflation cannot shrink it
For Gran Hermano Argentina, the 15-million-peso winner's prize was invested in Mercado Pago all season — inflation-proofing the jackpot on live TV
Mercado Pago
What it had to solve
Mercado Pago needed to explain its investment feature broadly enough that most Argentinians would understand it, in an economy where cash constantly loses value. Big Brother offered huge reach and spoke the way Argentinians do, but a traditional partnership would have made the brand just one more sponsor in the show.
How it works
Mercado Pago, Argentina's digital wallet, wanted to explain its investment feature to a country where cash loses value every month, and to explain it broadly enough that most Argentinians would understand it. It chose Gran Hermano (Big Brother), a show with huge reach and an unmistakably Argentine voice — but refused the obvious move of being one more sponsor. The entry point was the show's own prize, because in Argentina's economy the jackpot was quietly losing value while the four months of competition played out.
The idea turned the prize into the demonstration. The winner's money was invested in Mercado Pago for the duration of the season, so instead of shrinking with each inflation print it accrued returns; the product's benefit — that a tap can put cash to work against inflation — was shown through the stakes of the show itself rather than explained in an advertisement. A financial feature that is hard to make interesting to a mass audience became part of the plot.
The invested prize paid out at about 19.4 million pesos in March 2023, against the 15 million originally announced, and coverage of the finale made the mechanism itself part of the story. D&AD later archived the campaign as a Media piece.
Why it lands
- The prize was the one asset every viewer already cared about, so protecting it from inflation made an abstract product benefit feel urgent and personal.
- Instead of buying logo time, the brand engineered the sponsorship so the product's benefit happened inside the show — the demonstration wrote itself into the plot.
- Argentina's own inflation did the teaching: nobody needed a lecture on why money that keeps its value matters.
- The jump from 15 to about 19.4 million pesos gave the campaign a concrete, newsworthy ending that proved the mechanism.
What it did
Viewers watched money they cared about hold its value while inflation ate uninvested pesos; the finale in March 2023 paid out about 19.4 million pesos against the 15 million announced at the start. The campaign entered the D&AD archive as a Media piece.
What you can take
Find a stake the audience already holds — a prize, a goal, a deadline — and make the product the mechanism that protects it, so the demonstration happens inside a story people already follow.
Since then
Gran Hermano's winner received the invested prize in the March 2023 finale, and Argentine media reported that the 15-million-peso jackpot had grown to about 19.4 million through the Mercado Pago investment. In 2024 the case won a Channel Pioneer Gold at the WARC Awards for Effectiveness in Latin America and remained in the D&AD archive as a reference for turning sponsorship into demonstration.
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