MADRID FUSIÓN Madrid Fusion is one of the most important gastronomy summits in the world. It brings together the best chefs to show their latest creations and give people the chance to prove all kinds of wonders all together.

It's where new trends are shown and where all kinds of chefs go to learn and enjoy. There are contest, lectures and tastings. It has 20 years of history and it has been the launch pad for some of the best chefs in the world.

CONTEXT AND BRIEF Covid Pandemic affected everyone. But for the haute cuisine sector it was really hard to adapt fast to the new reality. Same thing happened to live events. Plus, when restrictions were lifted, this kind of food wasn't the top priority for most people due to the crisis.

That's why, more than ever, we needed to organize the summit and make it a success, to bring haute cuisine back to the conversation, and take people, journalists and more sponsors to the event. Not only from Spain, but from all over the world.

Additionally, we could make everyone pay special attention to Spanish cuisine and the Spanish gastronomy industry in general, that is part of the summit's DNA.

IDEA To do so, we decided to prove the value of this kind of food, which is in fact hard to put a price to, because of its uniqueness.

We brought together five of the greatest chefs in the world and asked them to create a 14 courses tasting menu all together, just once and just for one person. And to prove its value we publicly offered it to Robert De Niro, in exchange for him to advertise the festival. Basically, we would pay his acting fee with food.

WHY ROBERT DE NIRO? He is a very well-known foodie that even owns a Michelin star restaurant, who could understand the real value of this experience. And of course, he is one of the biggest movie stars ever, who could possibly ask for a lot of money to do advertising.

STRATEGY If he accepted, we would definitely prove how unique and priceless this experience could be. But if he didn't we would offer it to other celebrities to still have the chance to prove it and put some pressure on him. In any case, if we could make people even think that it was possible that he accepted would have proved our theory.

That's why we decided to make this offer public, through a single twitter post, addressing him directly and looking for his answer (or the other talents in case he didn't show up). As he doesn't have any social media, we needed people's help. But also, we used the reach of these 5 very important chefs, who acted also as influencers, sharing the content with their audience.

One of them, José Andrés, even tagged Robert Downey Junior in case De Niro didn't accepted.

THE ANSWER We honestly didn't know what would happen, but people and media loved it and joined the conversation almost immediately.

And, against all odds, he did answer saying “I’m in, of course I’m in”, just before the deadline, when we were actually about to offer it to other celebrities.

This also made it to the local and international news, and basically. helped us to put haute cuisine in the center of the conversation.

Due to covid restrictions, he could only come to Madrid almost one year later, on 1st March 2022. The chefs got together and prepared the menu for him at the Ritz Hotel, and he promoted the festival, as agreed. He even asked for a doggy bag.

RESULTS -We sold out every ticket for the festival, growing 10% from 2021 to 2022. -20% more journalists registered and attended the summit (2021 to 2022) -We reached more than 180M people with the campaign in 32 different countries. -We got more than 4.5M media impressions, worth almost €21.450.000, with no media investment at all. -Every National TV channel talked about the campaign at least three times: when the video was posted, when De Niro accepted the deal, and when he came to Madrid for the meal. -Haute cuisine became one of the hot topics during the campaign, and Spanish gastronomy was revalued. -And most importantly: WE GOT ROBERT DE NIRO TO PROMOTE OUR FESTIVAL, and we didn't pay him nor any agent or lawyer. This means we saved up to €1.000.000 in celebrity endorsement (maybe even more).