GINA INDELICADA

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Riccky Lopes, creator of
Facebook sensation Gina
Indelicada
It’s the internet phenomenon that has everybody
talking in Brazil, and yet it was born out of a
college dorm room during an informal chat
between fellow students. Sound familiar? Yes, I’m
talking about Facebook, but not the big idea that
came out of Mark Zuckerberg‘s mind, although
the founder of the world’s number one social
network has a lot to do with it.
I’m talking about Gina Indelicada (which would
literally translate as ‘Indelicate Gina’) a hit
Facebook page created about twelve days ago that
has already reached over 1.5 million likes,
considerably more than some of the country’s
most notorious public figures (former president
Lula da Silva’s official fan page has just about
222,000 likes, while supermodel Gisele
Bundchen‘s fan page has 857,000).
So, who is Gina and why is she so popular? Gina is actually a fictional
character based on a model who starred in a 1970s ad campaign for a
Brazilian brand of toothpicks called Rela Gina. While other toothpick
companies used to sell their product wrapped in cellophane paper, Rela
Gina’s executives thought it was a good idea to place the toothpicks inside of
a paper box, so it would be easier to take them to the table. The perfect
packaging found, they just needed a face to feature in the boxes. The rest is
history, and by giving an identity to the simplest of manufactured things,
Rela Gina, or simply Gina, became one of the most well-known products in
Brazil, accounting for 40% of the company’s total revenue.
But Gina, the toothpick brand, and Gina Indelicada, the Facebook star,
aren’t related at all. The latter was an idea of Riccky Lopes, a 19-year-old
advertising student based in Sao Paulo, who created the page after
successfully experimenting in the world of social media marketing. Lopes’
first foray into social networking was in 2010, when he launched a Twitter
profile that, at one point, was the second most retweeted in the world (the
 
 
LISTS | 8/27/2012 @ 3:50PM | 11,884 views
How A 65-Year-Old Toothpick
Brand Became A Surprising (And
Profitable) Facebook Marketing
Stunt
Anderson Antunes, Contributor
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first was Justin Bieber‘s, number 4 on Forbes’ Social Networking Superstars
list). The profile has been deactivated because, as Lopes tells Forbes in a
telephone interview Monday, he was “just using it to get familiar with the
microblog.”
“People think I just happened to discover the internet, but the truth is I’ve
been researching a lot about all of this for quite some time,” Lopes says.
During that time, he discovered that there’s no secret for reaching huge
audiences on the internet, something that he achieved more than once in
Facebook (besides Gina Indelicada, his other page has roughly 800,000
fans); but only one simple rule that should be followed: interactivity at all
times.
“What people really want is to be a part of something, to interact and have
their voices heard somehow,” he explains. As for the idea of Gina Indelicada,
Lopes recounted that he had the concept in mind, but he needed a character
to make it happen. “I was making dinner with my roommates, when I opened
the fridge and saw a box of Gina toothpicks. We chatted for a while about it,
and then it came to me–Gina was the character I was looking for.”
The page consists of screenshots of messages sent to Gina by its fans asking
questions about anything, which are always answered in a sarcastic,
sometimes indelicate way. “Brazilians are known for their friendliness, for
their love of hugging and all that, what can sometimes be seen as fake. So
whenever a person comes around who breaks that stereotype, people will
relate to them as someone who speaks their mind and is sincere. Gina is all
of that,” says Lopes.
Gina has become something else, particularly for the company to which the
character is commercially associated. “We never expected this kind of
attention and we certainly don’t intend to sue Lopes for it. Instead, we want
to partner up with him,” says Alfredo Rela Neto, CEO of the company, which
is already looking into ways of cashing in on the free publicity, including a
portfolio of new products based on Gina. “It’s amazing the fact that he’s a
19-year-old student and Gina is a 65-year-brand. He’s bringing us a totally
new consumer audience.”
As for Lopes, who claims to have received many job offers in the past few
days, he just signed with a new ad agency to coordinate the campaign of a
famous brand of deodorants, whose name he cannot reveal for the moment.
Facebook has become the ultimate tool for companies looking for new ways
to connect with customers. As a media channel reaching hundreds of
millions of people (46 million in Brazil alone, its second largest market
worldwide), it’s a matter of survival to be there. “No other advertising
channel, at least where you can communicate, can compete with those
numbers,” says Facebook advertiser Freddie Jansson.
“I think a web campaign for a company is more effective than a television
campaign these days,” says Lopes. “Facebook presents all the opportunities
for those who know how to use it.” Lopes admits, though, that the website
will probably lose its strong presence eventually. “It has happened before,
other social networking websites, like Orkut, became irrelevant. Facebook’s
time will come, too.”
But while it’s still hot, Lopes intends to make the most of it. “When I started
Gina Indelicada, I expected to reach a million Likes in a month. I’ve got
more than that in just a few days, plus amazing job offers that never
occurred me and even business proposals. I think that’s what Facebook gives
people and businesses: the chance to reinvent themselves. It’s what I did and
it is what Rela Gina is doing. And I applaud Zuckerberg for that. He’s a
visionary.”
Not the only one, apparently.
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