How Saltarín Rojo Made a Dog from Paraguay the Ultimate Football Fan
Fans Pure of Heart is a 2019 integrated campaign created by Craniux for Saltarín Rojo, built around the true story of Tesapará — a dog from Pedro Juan Caballero, in northern Paraguay — who formed an extraordinary bond with the coach of local football club 2 de Mayo, becoming a symbol of unconditional loyalty and community spirit.
Published in Paraguay in December 2019, the campaign operates across the intersection of pets, public interest, and sports — three categories that rarely share the same creative brief. Saltarín Rojo, a Paraguayan pet-related brand, anchors its positioning in the idea of pure-hearted companionship, and the story of Tesapará made that positioning tangible and human. The campaign was submitted to Clapboard's archive by Panchi Galarce of Craniux, and its original Spanish-language title, Hinchas Puro Corazón, translates directly as Fans Pure of Heart. The campaign consists of a single media asset — a video timestamped December 10, 2019 — making the quality of its central narrative the sole vehicle for brand communication. In a market where advertising budgets are often constrained and creative cut-through depends on story rather than production scale, Craniux chose to let a real relationship between a dog and a football coach carry the entire weight of the campaign. That decision, as the Gold award at Festival Tatakua 2019 would confirm, proved to be the right one. Clapboard rates this campaign 63 out of 100, reflecting solid emotional construction and award-recognised strategic clarity, offset by limited documented distribution and publicly available engagement data.
Football is the dominant sporting passion in Paraguay. Club 2 de Mayo, based in Pedro Juan Caballero in the Amambay Department, represents the kind of local football identity that sustains community life in smaller Paraguayan cities — a world removed from the global visibility of Olimpia or Cerro Porteño, the two clubs that command the largest fanbases in the country according to Es Wikipedia and the18.com. It is precisely in that gap — between global spectacle and local devotion — that Fans Pure of Heart finds its strategic footing.
Craniux identified a consumer insight that extends well beyond Paraguay: sports fandom and pet ownership share the same emotional vocabulary. Both are characterised by loyalty that asks nothing in return, presence that requires no explanation, and belonging that transcends language. By casting Tesapará — an actual dog, not a constructed mascot — as the campaign's protagonist, Saltarín Rojo aligned its brand with an authenticity that manufactured creative cannot replicate. The story had already spread beyond Paraguay's borders before the campaign gave it formal shape, which meant Craniux was not inventing a narrative so much as giving a viral moment a brand home. In the Latin American pet care market, affordability and emotional resonance drive purchasing decisions according to expertmarketresearch.com, with mid-priced products representing the largest segment by volume. Saltarín Rojo's positioning within that landscape benefits from associating the brand not with premium aspiration but with the kind of everyday loyalty that Tesapará embodies — loyal, uncomplicated, and genuinely felt. That positioning differentiates Saltarín Rojo from larger multinational competitors operating across Latin America, who tend to rely on polished, aspirational creative rather than ground-level community storytelling.
The creative execution of Fans Pure of Heart rests entirely on a single video asset built around documentary-style storytelling. Craniux structured the campaign around the found narrative of Tesapará and the coach of 2 de Mayo, allowing real footage and real relationships to carry the emotional load rather than scripted drama or high-production artifice. The original Spanish-language cut, titled Hinchas Puro Corazón with subtitles, was produced for Paraguayan audiences while remaining legible to Spanish-speaking viewers across Latin America.
The production credits for Fans Pure of Heart are documented in Clapboard's archive. Panchi Galarce of Craniux served as creative director and copywriter, shaping the campaign's narrative architecture and its submission to international award circuits. Art direction was handled by Raúl Ortiz and Darío Martinez, who gave the single-asset campaign its visual coherence. Diego Chirife held the account director role, managing the client relationship between Craniux and Saltarín Rojo. Graphic design was executed by Ferniko, while Federico Demestri served as editor — a particularly consequential role in a campaign where pacing and emotional timing determine whether a viewer connects or disengages. Production was overseen by Gonzalo Irún. The team's collective decision to work with one asset rather than a multi-channel spread reflects both the practical realities of advertising production in Paraguay and a deliberate creative confidence: if the story is strong enough, it does not need amplification through volume. The Gold awarded at Festival Tatakua 2019 in the Messages of PR and Impact in Free Publicity category, as reported by adlatina.com and documented in the Festival Tatakua records, validates that confidence. Festival Tatakua is recognised as Paraguay's principal advertising festival, making the Gold distinction the most significant domestic creative honour the campaign could receive.
Fans Pure of Heart won Gold at Festival Tatakua 2019 in the Messages of PR and Impact in Free Publicity — Piece category, as reported by adlatina.com. Festival Tatakua is Paraguay's foremost advertising awards competition, and a Gold in a public relations impact category confirms that the campaign was judged to have achieved genuine earned-media resonance rather than simply paid placement. That classification — Free Publicity — is structurally significant: it acknowledges that Tesapará's story travelled on its own before and after the campaign gave it a brand frame, which is among the most difficult outcomes to engineer in advertising and among the most valuable when it occurs naturally.
No verified third-party performance data — reach figures, video completion rates, or brand-lift measurements — is publicly available for this campaign. The Clapboard archive records 630 views and zero comments on the archived video asset, figures that reflect archive traffic rather than campaign distribution performance. What the structural evidence does confirm is that a single-asset integrated campaign, produced in Paraguay by a local agency for a domestic pet brand, earned the country's highest creative distinction in a category measuring real-world public impact. For a campaign of this geographic scale and production scope, that outcome represents a meaningful return on creative investment. The absence of broader trade press coverage in publications such as Campaign, Ad Age, or Adweek is consistent with the campaign's Paraguayan market focus rather than evidence of underperformance. Fans Pure of Heart earned a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting award-validated emotional effectiveness against a backdrop of limited documented distribution data.
Fans Pure of Heart is a December 2019 integrated campaign created by Craniux for Saltarín Rojo in Paraguay. It tells the true story of Tesapará, a dog from Pedro Juan Caballero who bonded with the coach of local football club 2 de Mayo, using that relationship to embody the brand's values of loyalty and companionship.
Craniux created the campaign for Saltarín Rojo. The documented creative team includes Panchi Galarce as creative director and copywriter, Raúl Ortiz and Darío Martinez as art directors, Diego Chirife as account director, Ferniko as graphic designer, Federico Demestri as editor, and Gonzalo Irún overseeing production.
Fans Pure of Heart won Gold at Festival Tatakua 2019 in Paraguay. It took the award in the Messages of PR and Impact in Free Publicity — Piece category, as reported by adlatina.com. Festival Tatakua is Paraguay's principal advertising festival, making this the most significant domestic creative recognition available to the campaign.
Tesapará is a real dog from Pedro Juan Caballero, in northern Paraguay. She formed a close bond with the coach of local football club 2 de Mayo, and her story spread virally before Craniux gave it a brand context for Saltarín Rojo, making her an authentic symbol of loyalty rather than a constructed advertising character.
Clapboard rates Fans Pure of Heart 63 out of 100. The score reflects strong emotional construction and the campaign's Gold award at Festival Tatakua 2019, balanced against limited publicly documented distribution data and the absence of verified third-party performance metrics for the single-asset Paraguayan market campaign.
Craniux built the entire campaign around one video asset, a strategic choice that concentrated creative impact on the strength of Tesapará's real story. The approach reflects both the production realities of advertising in Paraguay and a deliberate confidence that authentic narrative, when strong enough, requires no supplementary assets to achieve resonance.
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