Pibe Valderrama's fake haircut and the role of an agency today

In mid-October, Pibe Valderrama posted a video in which his wife was cutting off his hair. That hair is the first thing anyone remembers about the Colombian football legend, so the news spread fast and many media outlets picked it up. Days later, Valderrama removed a latex prosthesis, showed his hair was still there and revealed it had all been a campaign.

What happened?

The campaign was by Cerveza Andina, from Central Cervecera de Colombia, to promote Andina Refajo, and it was made by the agency Sancho BBDO. The first video ended with Valderrama saying “El calvo Valderrama” (bald Valderrama). In the second one, the reveal, he said “Se la creyeron” (you fell for it).

According to Bloomberg Línea, that second video reached about 139,000 views and more than 8,300 comments within a few hours. The campaign compares his hair to refajo, the Colombian mix of beer and soda, under the line “Un refajo sin colombiana, no merece llamarse refajo”.

Why did this stay with me?

Before selling at agencies I spent many years in media and advertising, including at Infobae, one of the largest digital media outlets in Spanish. There I saw that many brands invested more money in getting talked about than in running their ads.

With Valderrama something similar happened without that investment. For two days the media told the story because Valderrama without his hair was news, and nobody needed to pay them to do it.

What does a brand gain if at first nobody knows it’s behind it?

Awareness comes first. During those days almost nobody knew there was a beer behind it, but a lot of people had seen the video on social media or on some news site. When the brand appears, the association is already in place: you saw the story everywhere and now you add a name to it.

For that to work you need someone whose image everyone has in their head. Valderrama’s hair is so well known that a homemade video was enough to get people reacting.

And the AI part?

What struck me most was that many people were arguing about whether the video was made with AI. There was a prosthesis, a hair clipper and his wife next to him, and even so, for many people the first doubt was that one.

It isn’t an isolated case. In a Getty Images study of more than 30,000 people in 25 countries, 76% said it’s getting to the point where they can’t tell if an image is real.

I think it’s a good sign of where we are. With so much generated content, what’s real also has to be proven, and the campaign happens to be about authenticity.

What role should an agency play today?

Today I sell marketing agency services with SSTIL, so this hits close to home. Buying media space is still part of the job, but coming up with ideas the media and people want to tell on their own matters more and more. When that happens, the brand saves a lot of money and gets talked about without asking.

Not every brand has a Valderrama at hand, and it isn’t necessary. Here the idea came from something specific to the product, the comparison between authentic hair and a refajo made with Andina. The question it leaves me with is how many of the ideas presented to a client would pass that test: that a media outlet would want to tell them even if nobody paid it.