Beer and pizza go together like cookies and milk, peanut butter and jelly, and Thelma and Louise. It’s a timeless pairing, and a crowd-pleasing, budget-friendly way to fuel a party. If you live in almost any major American city, most pizzerias are wise to the notion that business really gets shaking at night, and they stay open late to accommodate the consumers whose cravings hit after a few brews.
But in Colombia, pizzerias march to the beat of a different drum. Most of them allegedly close up shop before midnight, right when most parties are just getting started. But in April 2024, one advertising agency tasked with marketing a Colombian beer brand found a way to hack the pizza curfew and sling a few beers in the process.
A Lucrative Partnership
The two major players in this story are worldwide ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) and its client, AB InBev-owned beer brand Poker. For those unfamiliar, Poker is a 4-percent-ABV pilsner currently produced at Cervecería Bavaria in Bogota, Colombia. with a history that dates back all the way to 1929.
Now, the pizza campaign wasn’t the first time DDB and Poker joined forces. In March 2018, DDB created the “Amigos de WhatsApp” campaign, which helped boost Poker sales by 12.5 percent in just two months. Fast-forward to 2023, and DDB helped Poker launch the rather clever “Influencers’ Friends” campaign, which saved the beer brand millions of dollars on potentially expensive celebrity endorsements, reached over 560 million people on social
