El Sol, the annual Ibero-american festival for advertising and communication and one of the most important worldwide, begins on Thursday in Bilbao. The latest news published by the festival indicates 2,296 campaigns in competition this year, which means almost a 13% rise in participation on last year’s figures.

Taking a look at last year’s winning advertising campaigns, several come to mind including “Inmortal Fans”, a campaign by agency Ogilvy Brasil for Sport Club Recife, “Aquarius Pueblos” by agency Sra Rushmore for Aquarius or “Coca-Cola download concert” by Ogilvy & Mather for Coca-Cola. It’s interesting to note that despite being very different campaigns, they all have one thing in common: a marketing strategy based on online consumer participation and social media networks. Consumer profiles are changing, they’re more demanding, desire new experiences, new emotions and implication in transactions. Without a doubt it’s the marketing that taps into these desires that sells. The Gran Premio del Sol 2013 winner “Inmortal fans”, encouraged Sport Club Recife fans to sign up for a organ donor card with which their families would be informed of the donor’s wishes. The number of organ donors that signed up was astounding and the number of organ donations rose in Brazil 54%.

Campaigns that encourage audience participation and that appeal to consumers’ sentiments in order to gain more reach are clearly on the rise, and recent work Polar Star Films stands testimony to this. In the upcoming campaign for agency RdC Comunicació for Gaes for example, we’re shooting real stories with people suffering from hearing problems. Likewise in DDB’s MediaMarkt multichannel campaign “El Cliente de Oro”, the protagonist is none other than one of the superstore’s customers. We’re certain this tendency can only rise.