ARCHIVEWalking With Shackleton - Quark Expeditions | Clapboard Ad Archive
Walking With Shackleton is a captivating campaign by Quark Expeditions, created by Serrini, that...
Chevrolet Finds New Roads in Colombia's Forgotten Amazon Gateway
Chevrolet's 'Finding the New Roads of Colombia' is a short documentary produced with Commonwealth//McCann Colombia and broadcast partner Discovery, released in April 2021, that reframes the Caquetá region — long associated with conflict — as a biodiverse, culturally rich gateway to the Colombian Amazon, according to Adlatina.
The campaign operates under Chevrolet's global 'Find New Roads' platform, first launched in 2013, and represents a significant evolution of that platform, as reported by Latinspots.com/news/travels-in-a-former-war-zone-how-chevrolet-brought-finding-the-new-roads-of-colombia-to-tv" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Little Black Book, shifting from product-led mobility messaging toward social renewal and destination discovery. In Colombia, Caquetá had for decades been dominated by the presence of FARC-controlled territory, violence, and kidnappings, leaving one of the country's most naturally spectacular and biodiverse regions effectively closed to outside exploration. Chevrolet positioned its vehicles as the literal and symbolic instrument of re-entry, with local residents and former guerrillas serving as guides and storytellers throughout the film, per lbbonline.com.
The documentary premiered on Discovery Channel across 14 Latin American countries in April 2021, according to lbbonline.com, marking a geographic footprint that extended well beyond Colombia's domestic market. The production itself took approximately two years to develop and complete, according to lbbonline.com, a timeline that underscores the logistical and conceptual ambition of the project. The campaign sits at the intersection of the automotive and tourism industries, using the freedom-of-movement proposition native to car advertising as a foundation for a broader cultural argument: that Colombia's roads — and the communities along them — deserve to be rediscovered, according to The Drum. Clapboard scores this campaign 69 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition and cultural specificity tempered by limited measurable commercial outcomes, according to Marketersbyadlatina.
Chevrolet has operated in Colombia for 65 years, according to Samuel Estrada, Regional Director at Commonwealth/McCann South America West, as quoted by lbbonline.com. That depth of market presence gave the brand standing to engage with Colombia's political and geographic complexity in a way that a newer entrant could not credibly attempt. The strategic insight was precise: Caquetá represented an untapped narrative — a region of extraordinary biodiverse landscapes and Amazonian ecology that Colombian consumers had been conditioned to associate with danger rather than discovery.
The automotive category in Colombia sits within a broader Latin American market where brand trust and cultural alignment carry substantial weight in purchase consideration. Competitors including Toyota and Renault — both active in the Colombian market — tend to anchor their brand communications to reliability and value. Chevrolet's decision to produce large-format branded content rather than conventional advertising created clear creative distance from that competitive norm. Samuel Estrada described the project as 'full of challenges; it was the first time a client ventured into large-format branded content,' as quoted by lbbonline.com, confirming that the strategic ambition was without direct precedent for Chevrolet in this market.
The choice of Discovery as a broadcast and production partner was deliberate. Discovery's editorial authority in natural history and exploration content provided the documentary with immediate credibility as journalism rather than advertising, a distinction that mattered given the sensitivity of the subject matter. In Colombia, a country still processing decades of internal conflict, the decision to feature former guerrillas as on-camera guides required a level of editorial seriousness that a purely commercial vehicle could not have sustained. The partnership with Discovery gave the film that seriousness, and ensured its distribution across a Latin American audience already primed to receive exploration-led storytelling through that channel.
FOX TELECOLOMBIA served as the production house for 'Finding the New Roads of Colombia,' a detail confirmed by Samuel Estrada in remarks quoted by lbbonline.com, who noted that 'from the first minute they knew about the project they were as excited as we were.' That enthusiasm is legible in the finished film, which moves through Caquetá's biodiverse landscapes — dense Amazonian forest, river systems, open plains — with the visual grammar of prestige nature documentary rather than automotive advertising.
The creative approach centres on local voices. Former guerrillas and long-term residents of Caquetá appear not as subjects to be observed but as active narrators and guides, a structural choice that shifts the film's authority from the brand outward to the community. This is a meaningful creative decision: it prevents the documentary from reading as tourism marketing dressed in social-responsibility language, and it grounds the 'new roads' metaphor in lived human experience rather than scenic landscape. The Chevrolet vehicles appear within this world as functional presences — the means by which the film's journey becomes physically possible — rather than as hero products given isolated screen time.
The campaign was submitted in April 2021 and contains a single primary media asset, per Clapboard's records, which is the documentary itself, titled in Spanish as 'Encontrando los nuevos caminos de Colombia.' The film accumulated over one million views, per data recorded by Clapboard, alongside 208 likes and ten comments at the time of documentation, figures that reflect the relatively niche but engaged audience the documentary format naturally attracts. The two-year development period, as reported by lbbonline.com, gave the creative team time to build authentic relationships in Caquetá before cameras arrived, a production approach that is visible in the comfort and specificity of the on-camera contributors.
'Finding the New Roads of Colombia' won a Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2021, according to lbbonline.com. That recognition represents the campaign's most formally verified performance data point, and it carries significant weight: Cannes Lions juries evaluate work against a global competitive field, and a Gold in branded content for an automotive campaign from Colombia signals that the work cleared a high bar for creative and cultural integrity.
The documentary accumulated over one million views, as recorded by Clapboard, a figure that is notable for long-form branded content, which typically operates with lower reach than short-form social advertising but commands deeper engagement from the audiences it does reach. The view count confirms that the Discovery partnership delivered meaningful distribution beyond the conventional brand-owned channel ecosystem.
No independently verified sales impact or brand-tracking uplift data for this campaign is publicly available at the time of writing. What the structural evidence does support is that the campaign achieved its primary stated objective: repositioning Caquetá as a destination and reintroducing Colombia's biodiverse Amazon gateway to a Latin American audience. The 14-country broadcast footprint, confirmed by lbbonline.com, ensured that this repositioning extended beyond the Colombian domestic market and reached a regional audience across Latin America. For Chevrolet, a brand with 65 years in Colombia according to lbbonline.com, the campaign also reinforced long-term equity by demonstrating institutional commitment to the country's social recovery rather than simply its consumer market.
'Finding the New Roads of Colombia' is a short documentary by Chevrolet and Commonwealth//McCann Colombia, released in April 2021. It explores the Caquetá region of Colombia — a biodiverse gateway to the Amazon long associated with conflict — using local residents and former guerrillas as guides and narrators, broadcast on Discovery Channel across Latin America.
Commonwealth//McCann Colombia created the campaign. The agency worked with broadcast and production partner Discovery, and FOX TELECOLOMBIA served as the production house. Samuel Estrada, Regional Director at Commonwealth/McCann South America West, led the project, which took approximately two years to develop, according to lbbonline.com.
The campaign won a Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2021, according to lbbonline.com. The award recognised the work in branded content, making it one of the most formally validated automotive documentary campaigns to emerge from Colombia's advertising industry in that period.
The documentary premiered on Discovery Channel in April 2021 and was distributed across 14 Latin American countries, according to lbbonline.com. It also accumulated over one million views on digital platforms, per Clapboard's records, giving the single-asset campaign a regional footprint uncommon for long-form branded content.
Caquetá is one of Colombia's most biodiverse regions and a gateway to the Amazon, but decades of FARC-related conflict had made it inaccessible, per lbbonline.com. Chevrolet used the region to extend its global 'Find New Roads' platform into a story of social renewal, repositioning both the brand and the destination simultaneously.
Chevrolet launched the global 'Find New Roads' platform in 2013, according to lbbonline.com. The 2021 Colombia campaign expanded that platform significantly, moving from product-led mobility messaging toward cultural reconciliation and destination discovery, using Caquetá's biodiverse Amazonian landscapes as the vehicle for that strategic evolution.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
.jpg&w=256&q=75)
