1. Executive Summary
On July 18, 2025, Johnnie Walker launched Keep Walking a lo boricua con Johnnie Walker, a loyalty campaign that celebrated Latin culture through a partnership with a global superstar. Running through September 18, the initiative invited consumers in Mexico to purchase Johnnie Walker products valued at a minimum of $299 MXN (~$16). Then upload their receipts via WhatsApp, and accumulate points to redeem for prizes. The campaign had an enticing grand reward: top five participants would win an all-expenses-paid trip to Puerto Rico to attend a live concert.
Participants earned one point for every peso spent. They also had bonus opportunities for completing trivia, uploading fan selfies in “Fan Mode,” and sharing basic profile data. This not only fueled engagement but also helped Johnnie Walker gather valuable consumer insights about fan behavior and purchase patterns. By the campaign’s end, nearly 400 participants had joined, collectively earning over 263,000 points. The results demonstrated how a well-executed WhatsApp-based experience could transform traditional loyalty programs into interactive, culturally resonant moments for modern audiences.
2. Company Background
Johnnie Walker, a flagship brand in Diageo’s portfolio, has long symbolized progress and resilience through its iconic “Keep Walking” slogan. As one of the world’s most recognized Scotch whiskies, the brand continues to evolve by connecting with younger audiences who seek authenticity and purpose in the brands they support. In recent years, Diageo’s marketing teams across Latin America have increasingly adopted mobile-first strategies. They’ve leveraged WhatsApp and other conversational platforms to bring global campaigns closer to consumers’ daily digital habits.
The Keep Walking a lo boricua collaboration marked a new chapter in this digital transformation. More than a traditional promotion, it represented a cultural convergence between music, identity, and technology. This was designed to deepen brand relevance in a market where personal connection and entertainment drive purchase loyalty.
3. Campaign Challenge
The campaign’s objective was to merge brand loyalty mechanics with fan-driven engagement. Achieving that balance at scale came with several operational and technical challenges. First, the receipt validation process was inherently complex. Consumers submitted receipts from a wide range of retailers including Chedraui, Walmart, Amazon, Mercado Libre, HEB, and others. All of these receipts were with varying formats, print quality, and levels of detail. The system had to reliably extract and verify totals, dates, and store names across thousands of unique submissions.
Fraud prevention presented an additional layer of difficulty. With a big prize at stake, Johnnie Walker needed assurance that participants could not reuse, edit, or share receipts to gain unfair advantages. The campaign also sought to capture deeper behavioral data: learning what actions motivated users, what features sustained engagement, and what questions participants asked most frequently throughout the experience.
Lastly, although WhatsApp was the ideal channel for reach and accessibility, its default image compression created quality limitations that could affect receipt readability. The challenge was not only to make the experience seamless and responsive, but also to maintain technical precision and data accuracy at every step.
4. Veryfi’s End-to-End Solution
Veryfi provided a complete technology stack to power the campaign. It helped to integrate automated document processing, bot development, and analytics into one cohesive experience. The WhatsApp bot, built by Veryfi, served as the campaign’s central interaction point. It guided users through consent, profile setup, receipt submission, and point tracking. All of these steps were within a conversational flow that felt personal and easy to use.
Once a participant purchased a Johnnie Walker product and submitted a photo of their receipt, Veryfi’s OCR engine immediately extracted key information such as totals, dates, and retailer names. The system validated each entry against the campaign’s eligibility rules. This ensured that only receipts meeting the minimum value and timeframe were accepted. Invalid or incomplete receipts, especially from Amazon, which often lacked proper invoices or dates, were automatically flagged for review.
Beyond receipt validation, the bot also managed trivia challenges, selfie submissions, and bonus point assignments. This created a fully automated engagement cycle for the user. The back-end system processed all transactions in real time. This allowed users to receive instant feedback on their points and standing, which kept the interaction fluid and rewarding.
5. Anti-Fraud Technology Features
Given the high-profile nature of the campaign, Veryfi implemented a multilayered fraud prevention framework that operated seamlessly behind the scenes. Each receipt submission underwent duplicate detection, ensuring that the same receipt could not be reused across multiple accounts. The platform cross-checked purchase data with retailer identifiers. This confirmed authenticity and verified that all entries contained the required fields, including total amount and purchase date.
To further safeguard integrity, the system employed behavioral fingerprinting to detect irregular submission patterns. An example of such pattern was multiple accounts operating from the same device or region. By combining metadata analysis with automated flagging, the campaign maintained real-time fraud protection without disrupting the user experience.
6. User Experience & Participation Flow
Despite the sophisticated infrastructure supporting it, the user experience remained remarkably simple. Participants began by scanning a QR code or sending a direct message to Johnnie Walker’s WhatsApp number. After agreeing to the campaign’s terms and conditions, users were prompted to complete a short profile. This step not only personalized the experience but also awarded them extra points. They then submitted their receipts by sending a photo, followed by immediate confirmation of earned points.
Participants could return to the bot anytime to check their balance, participate in trivia challenges, or upload selfies in Fan Mode to earn additional rewards. These interactive layers transformed what could have been a transactional promotion into an immersive digital experience.
Common user inquiries were “Why was my receipt rejected?” or “Why was my Amazon purchase not accepted?”. These were handled directly within the chat interface. Most rejections stemmed from unapproved vendors or missing invoice details. Overall, customer inquiries remained low, a testament to the campaign’s clarity and ease of use.
7. Prize Structure & Rewards
The reward system was intentionally designed to blend instant gratification with aspirational incentives. Every valid purchase generated redeemable points that participants could use for branded merchandise and digital rewards. The competitive leaderboard kept engagement high throughout the campaign. The top point earners competed for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Puerto Rico to see the concert.
This multi-tiered structure balanced accessibility and excitement, encouraging repeat purchases while maintaining broad appeal. The integration of trivia, selfies, and fan challenges ensured that even participants who were not among the top scorers remained motivated and emotionally connected to the brand.
8. Real-Time Analytics & Management
Behind the scenes, Diageo’s marketing team benefited from real-time performance visibility through Veryfi’s integrated analytics system. The backend, connected to Google Sheets and API dashboards, tracked participant counts, points distribution, retailer engagement, and geographic performance across Mexico.
This live data empowered the team to monitor campaign health, identify engagement peaks, and understand which mechanics drove the most participation. The system automatically categorized the fraud rejections by cause, allowing for fast troubleshooting. Beyond campaign management, these insights provided a rich dataset on consumer behavior, informing future activations across Diageo’s portfolio.
9. Key Results & Learnings
By the end of the two-month campaign, Johnnie Walker had attracted nearly 400 participants who together earned more than 263,000 points. The low volume of support inquiries and high rate of completed actions demonstrated that the bot experience was intuitive and engaging. Despite the artist announcing he would no longer perform in Puerto Rico that year, the campaign successfully sustained excitement across Mexico. He has only confirmed tour destination in December, and leveraged that anticipation to boost brand visibility.
The initiative validated that WhatsApp could serve as a powerful channel for large-scale consumer activations, blending loyalty, entertainment, and data capture into one seamless system. It also reaffirmed that culturally anchored campaigns, when supported by strong technical execution, can drive both emotional engagement and measurable business results.
10. Partnership Impact
For Diageo, Keep Walking a lo boricua represented more than a promotion, it was a proof of concept for data-driven fan engagement at scale. The campaign demonstrated how technology could translate cultural fandom into brand loyalty while giving marketing teams granular insights into consumer behavior.
For Veryfi, the project reinforced its position as a trusted partner for receipt automation, fraud prevention, and conversational experience design in global campaigns. By uniting these capabilities under one system, Veryfi enabled Johnnie Walker to focus on storytelling and brand experience rather than operational logistics. Together, the partnership showcased how the future of consumer engagement in Latin America will be by intelligent automation, cultural relevance, and the seamless integration of everyday digital platforms like WhatsApp.
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