FARM Rio is a Brazilian fashion brand born in Rio de Janeiro in 1997, known for its vibrant colors, joyful spirit, and commitment to sustainability. Today the brand has a presence in more than 50 countries and 100 retail stores across Brazil.
As it continued growing internationally, the challenge was clear: bring its authentic Brazilian identity to the U.S. market without sacrificing the creativity and quality that define it globally.
The answer came through creator-led partnership ads — and the results proved that when authenticity is well-directed, it becomes performance.
The Challenge
With FARM Rio's expansion into the U.S. market — targeting women 25 and over, connected to lifestyle and fashion — the team faced a two-sided challenge: how to translate the brand's distinctly Brazilian identity to an American audience authentically, while driving ecommerce conversions and lowering acquisition costs at the same time.
The brand's visual and cultural language is distinctive. Its warmth, color, and Brazilian spirit are core to its appeal — but they needed to resonate in a market with different cultural codes, consumption habits, and platform behaviors. The risk of losing authenticity in translation was real.
At the same time, the campaign couldn't just build awareness. It had to deliver measurable business results. Creativity alone wasn't enough — the content had to be built with performance in mind from day one.
The Approach
FARM Rio partnered with Winclap Studio to source and collaborate with creators who were a genuine fit for the brand — and built the strategy around three core pillars:
1. Local intelligence curation + global vision
Winclap's Brazil and U.S. teams worked in an integrated way — combining deep knowledge of FARM Rio's brand essence with a nuanced reading of the American audience's cultural behavior. The result: a creator selection that felt natural, not manufactured.
2. Creative freedom with clear direction
Rather than over-scripting the content, Winclap provided creators with briefing, context, and references to guide — not constrain. Creators wore a variety of FARM Rio's fall collection across different occasions, producing content that felt like genuine recommendations, not ads.
3. Performance thinking from the start
Every piece of content was conceived with paid media potential in mind: clear hooks, direct messaging, and retention in the first seconds. The campaign ran as an Advantage+ sales campaign on Meta, using AI and machine learning to automate and optimize delivery. Partnership ads were distributed through both FARM Rio's and each creator's handles, opening the brand to entirely new audiences.
The A/B Test
To measure impact rigorously, the team ran an A/B test in Meta Ads Manager during October 2–23, 2025:
- Cell A: Advantage+ sales campaign with standard photo and video ads
- Cell B: Advantage+ sales campaign with creator-led partnership ads
The Results
The A/B test confirmed the impact of the creator-led approach:
- 36% lower cost per result when using creator-led partnership ads, compared to the campaign without partnership ads.
- 56% increase in online sales when using creator-led partnership ads, compared to the campaign without partnership ads.
Key Learnings
- Authenticity and performance are not opposites. When content feels genuine, it converts.
- Local + global collaboration is a strategic advantage. Teams that understand both the brand's origin and the target market's cultural context enable more precise creator selection.
- Give direction, not scripts. Briefing creators with context — rather than rigid scripts — unlocks more natural storytelling.
- Let AI do the heavy lifting on distribution. Combining creator authenticity with Meta's Advantage+ suite maximized both reach and efficiency.
- Fit matters more than aesthetics. The most effective creators weren't just visually aligned with the brand — they genuinely lived its lifestyle.
Conclusion
The FARM Rio case shows that expanding a brand into a new market doesn't require abandoning what makes it unique — it requires finding the right voices to carry that identity authentically.
By combining local cultural intelligence, a creator selection process grounded in genuine lifestyle fit, and a performance-first strategy powered by Meta's Advantage+ tools, FARM Rio brought its Brazilian essence to American audiences in a way that felt natural and delivered real business results.
When authenticity is well-directed, it scales.
