GamaTV Turns World Cup Screen Time Into a Digital Engagement Play

Why Laika's Strategy for GamaTV Targeted the Second-Screen Habit in Ecuador

Ecuador's television landscape in 2014 was dominated by a small number of national free-to-air broadcasters. According to Legacy Export Gov, approximately 98 percent of Ecuadorian advertising investment was concentrated among six audiovisual media companies: Ecuavisa, Telesistema/RTS, Gamavisión, TC Televisión, Teleamazonas, and Sí TV. Within that concentrated market, retaining audience attention during premium live content was a genuine competitive pressure, not an abstract concern. GamaTV's rivals — most notably Ecuavisa and Teleamazonas — were equally capable of capturing fragmented viewer attention across digital touchpoints.

The strategic insight underpinning the campaign was behavioural rather than demographic. By 2014, smartphone penetration and social media engagement around live sports events had begun reshaping how audiences experienced football globally, and Ecuador was not exempt from that shift. According to dentsu-ho.com, global advertising expenditure grew 4.6 percent in 2014, driven in part by digital formats accelerating their share of total spend. Laika identified that the problem for GamaTV was not whether viewers would watch the World Cup — Ecuador's presence in the tournament guaranteed interest — but whether viewers would remain present on screen when the decisive moments arrived. The creation of aquihayseleccion.com was a direct answer to that tension, positioning GamaTV not merely as a broadcaster but as a service that actively helped fans manage their attention. This reframing of a television channel as a digital attention partner was a strategically coherent move in a market where linear television still commanded primary loyalty but digital behaviour was already eroding the quality of that loyalty during live events.

The Creative Craft Behind Laika's Digital Platform for GamaTV's World Cup Campaign

Adrián Burgos led the creative and copy direction for 'Don't Miss the Goals', working with art director Nuno Acosta and illustrator Javier Muguerza under the Laika banner in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The campaign's creative output centred on aquihayseleccion.com, a digital destination built around the specific anxiety of missing a World Cup goal while distracted by a phone or social feed.

The platform's conceptual elegance lay in its refusal to compete with second-screen behaviour by condemning it. Rather than instructing viewers to put their phones down — a message that advertising history suggests rarely lands — the campaign met fans where they already were: online, tweeting, scrolling, and sharing during the match. By creating a tool that integrated with that behaviour, Laika gave the campaign a functional dimension that extended well beyond the conventional 30-second promotional spot. The visual identity, shaped by Javier Muguerza's illustration work, gave the platform a distinct aesthetic that aligned with the energy of tournament football without defaulting to the visual clichés common to sports broadcast promotions in the region.

Ilán Goldenstein contributed additional creative input, and the collaborative structure of the team reflected Laika's positioning as a creative digital agency capable of producing both conceptual strategy and executional craft from its Guayaquil base. The campaign was archived as a single media asset, which suggests a focused rather than multi-format rollout — a deliberate choice that concentrated the campaign's impact through one digital experience rather than dispersing it across multiple executions. That restraint is itself a creative decision, and one that aligned with the campaign's core proposition: less distraction, more presence.

GamaTV Campaign Results and Recognitions Earned in Ecuador and Across Latin America

No verified sales lift, market-share change, audience-growth figure, or brand-tracking result for 'Don't Miss the Goals' is publicly available. No trade-press reviews in Campaign, AdAge, or equivalent publications have been documented for this campaign.

Despite the absence of published performance metrics, the campaign did receive independent industry recognition. According to doptus.com and linkedin.com, 'Don't Miss the Goals' won a Silver award at Promax/BDA Latin America in the Interactive category in October 2014. It was also named an Official Honoree at the 19th Annual Webby Awards in the Social category, according to Gamavision Com Ec. The Webby recognition is particularly notable given that the Webby Awards, as reported by their organisers, receive entries from across the global digital industry — an Official Honoree distinction in that context represents meaningful peer recognition for a campaign produced in Ecuador by a Guayaquil-based agency.

Structurally, the campaign demonstrated effectiveness by identifying a genuine behavioural friction point and engineering a digital solution to it rather than producing a passive awareness message. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a well-executed concept with clear strategic logic, limited to a single documented media asset and without the breadth of measurable outcome data that would push the score higher. Within Ecuador's concentrated broadcast media market, the campaign stands as an early, credible example of a national television broadcaster using digital tools to actively defend live audience attention during a major sporting event.