BBVA Colombia Turns a World Record into a Print Ad You Feel
BBVA Colombia's "2:45 Without Breathing" is a 2018 integrated print campaign created by DDB Colombia that transformed sponsored athlete Sofía Gómez Uribe's apnea world record into a newspaper advertisement designed to be read in exactly 2 minutes and 45 seconds while holding one's breath.
The campaign launched in April 2018 in Colombia, appearing in El Tiempo, the country's leading newspaper, as reported by bbva.com. The creative premise is direct and physical: long-form text was composed so that a reader completing it at a natural pace would exhaust approximately the same duration that Gómez remained submerged during her record dive on July 7, 2017, when she descended to 84 meters in constant-weight apnea with fins, according to bbva.com. The act of reading became an act of empathy, collapsing the distance between an elite athletic achievement and an ordinary morning commute.
BBVA's sponsorship of Sofía Gómez provided the strategic foundation. Rather than broadcasting the record through conventional sports marketing, DDB Colombia inverted the relationship between audience and athlete entirely. The reader was not asked to admire the feat from a distance but to inhabit it, breath by breath. Readers were then encouraged to record and share their own breath-holding times across social networks, as documented by bbva.com, extending the campaign beyond print into a participatory social layer. The campaign was published as a single integrated media asset, a formally austere execution whose power resided entirely in its conceptual precision. It earned a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition matched by measurable industry recognition.
BBVA Colombia operated within a highly competitive banking landscape when the campaign launched. Colombia's banking system held approximately US$142.9 billion in assets as of March 31, 2018, according to bbva.com. Within that market, BBVA Colombia held a 10.4 percent loan-market share and an 11.7 percent deposit-market share in the first quarter of 2018, per bbva.com, positioning the bank as a significant but not dominant player against larger rivals. Grupo Aval, Colombia's market leader, reported US$34.8 billion in combined Colombian bank assets as of September 30, 2018, according to grupoaval.com, illustrating the scale of the competitive gap BBVA faced.
In this environment, differentiation through emotional and cultural relevance became a strategic imperative rather than a creative luxury. The insight animating "2:45 Without Breathing" was precise: athletic sponsorship is most powerful not when it associates a brand with a winner but when it makes the audience feel what winning costs. Sofía Gómez's discipline, focus, and physical endurance were qualities BBVA wished to embody institutionally. By engineering a reading experience that mirrored her performance duration, DDB Colombia translated abstract brand values into a visceral, first-person encounter. Jonathan Romero, Marketing Manager at BBVA Colombia, led the campaign, according to bbva.com, anchoring the activation within a broader effort to position BBVA as a bank that sponsors human potential rather than merely sports properties. The social sharing mechanism further democratised the record, inviting Colombians to measure themselves against Gómez's achievement and publicly declare the result — generating organic reach without paid amplification.
DDB Colombia built the entire creative execution around a single constraint: the copy must take 2 minutes and 45 seconds to read at a comfortable pace. Leonardo "Leo" Macías served as Chief Creative Officer at DDB Colombia, with Juan Cárdenas and Carlos Agudo sharing Creative Director responsibilities, according to bbva.com and marcommnews.com. Copywriters Natalia Prias and Laura Garrido crafted the text itself, the campaign's essential structural element, while Art Directors María Hernández and Miguel Van Bommel shaped its visual form within the newspaper context, as credited by bbva.com.
The decision to place the advertisement in El Tiempo was not incidental. As Colombia's leading newspaper, El Tiempo delivered the broadest possible reach among the literate, civic-minded adult audience most likely to engage with a long-form, participation-based print execution. The layout was restrained by design: the text needed to carry the full experiential weight without visual distraction, because any reader glancing away to process an image would break the rhythm the copy had been engineered to sustain.
The campaign's digital dimension was handled by a dedicated production team. Johan Coy served as Motion Designer, Carlos Ballén as UX Director, Juan Pablo Ángel as Web Designer, and Julián Valencia and Sebastián Parra as Developers, all credited by bbva.com. This infrastructure supported the social sharing layer, where readers could log and broadcast their breath-holding times. The result was a campaign that began on paper and completed itself in public, with each shared result functioning as an independent endorsement of Gómez's achievement and, by extension, BBVA's support of it.
"2:45 Without Breathing" won a Bronze Lion at the 65th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2018, in the Direct category for Copywriting, as reported by bbva.com. According to bbva.com, BBVA identified this as the company's first Cannes Lions award, marking the recognition as institutionally significant beyond the single campaign. Cannes Lions remains the advertising industry's most scrutinised competitive benchmark, and a Direct Lion specifically validates work that drives measurable audience response — in this case, the participatory breath-holding mechanic and social sharing component.
No verified third-party performance data covering social reach, earned media value, or conversion metrics for the campaign is publicly available beyond what bbva.com has disclosed. The campaign's structural effectiveness, however, is analytically legible. A single print asset in a national newspaper generated award recognition at the world's foremost creative festival, achieved a documented social sharing loop without paid digital support, and established a creative precedent for BBVA Colombia's sponsorship communications. As reported by Revistapym Com Co, the campaign attracted attention within Colombia's marketing and communications industry as an example of conceptually precise branded content. The Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes a genuinely original idea with rigour, with room for broader scale and documented audience measurement to push the score higher.
"2:45 Without Breathing" is a 2018 BBVA Colombia print campaign created by DDB Colombia. It is a newspaper advertisement designed to take exactly 2 minutes and 45 seconds to read, mirroring sponsored athlete Sofía Gómez Uribe's apnea world record. Readers were invited to hold their breath while reading and share their times on social networks, as documented by bbva.com.
Sofía Gómez Uribe is a Colombian apneist sponsored by BBVA. On July 7, 2017, she descended to 84 meters in constant-weight apnea and remained submerged for 2 minutes and 45 seconds, according to bbva.com. BBVA used her record as the creative foundation to connect the bank's values with human endurance and discipline in the Colombian market.
The campaign won a Bronze Lion at the 65th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in the Direct category for Copywriting, as reported by bbva.com. BBVA identified this as the company's first Cannes Lions award. The recognition validated the campaign's participatory direct mechanic, where readers held their breath and shared results publicly across social networks.
DDB Colombia created the campaign for BBVA Colombia, according to bbva.com. The core creative team included Chief Creative Officer Leonardo Macías, Creative Directors Juan Cárdenas and Carlos Agudo, and Copywriters Natalia Prias and Laura Garrido. Jonathan Romero, Marketing Manager at BBVA Colombia, led the campaign from the client side, as credited by bbva.com.
The advertisement ran in El Tiempo, Colombia's leading national newspaper, as reported by bbva.com. El Tiempo provided the broadest possible reach for the long-form print execution. The campaign launched in April 2018 and included a digital participation layer where readers could record and share their breath-holding times across social networks, extending its reach organically.
The campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100. This score reflects strong conceptual originality and verified industry recognition through the Cannes Lions Bronze Lion win, while acknowledging that broader documented audience performance metrics and scale could push the score higher. The score is assigned editorially by Clapboard based on creative and effectiveness criteria.
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