A company from Chongqing hired me to take its micro-drama app into Latin America. They knew no one in the region. I did not know their product. Seven months later the contract had been renewed on results and we had 8.2 million organic views in six countries. This is what we did and, above all, what we did not do.
We did not translate. We rewrote.
The mistake almost every Asian or European company makes when entering the region is to translate. The same micro-drama needs a different hook in Mexico than in Bolivia, and a different one in Colombia than in Peru. We assembled a team of more than 80 people across operations, validation and testing, and wrote each country's content from scratch.
Volume you can measure
One video tells you nothing: it gives you luck or silence. We set up 30 accounts and produced more than 300 videos about the same product. Sixty people actually used the app and broke the material before the market saw it. A single metric ruled: cost per install, not views. The video that lowered that cost was multiplied. The one that did not was pulled within 48 hours.
What we built beyond content
Brand, website, Spanish-language app interface design, in-person events and an artificial intelligence team for production. All measured against KPIs written into the contract.
The contract
Seven months, bilingual Spanish-Chinese, in two phases: USD 25,000 for the first and USD 35,000 for the second. Retention depended on meeting the KPIs. 100 % were met across three phases and the client signed a letter of recommendation. The final result was 820 times the agreed target.
What I take with me
- If your product works in China and not in Latin America, it is not the product. It is the cultural translation.
- Thirty small accounts teach more than one big one.
- Budget is not the problem. The narrative is.
- Write the KPIs into the contract. It is the only way the renewal is not a conversation.
If you are bringing an Asian product to the region, the conversation starts at the shelf: what sells, at what price and against whom.