A viral Super Bonder Ad that Sparked Brazil’s Real-Time Web Revolution
How a Gravity-Defying Monitor, a Viral Campaign, and Real-Time Tech Pioneered Brazil’s Interactive Web Era
Context
In 2005, viral marketing was just beginning to emerge as a powerful new strategy. Social media platforms were nascent, broadband was a luxury, and most web interactivity was limited to static HTML and early JavaScript. It was in this landscape that DM9DDB launched a groundbreaking digital campaign for Super Bonder, a brand of instant glue by Henkel.
The creative concept was led by Cris Santoro, Pedro Gravena, Maurício Mazzariol, Alexandre D’Albergaria, and Keke Toledo, under the creative direction of Sérgio Valente and Fernanda Romano. They imagined a provocative and tangible demonstration of the product's power: an 11kg monitor glued to a wall using just 0.3g of Super Bonder, continuously displaying real-time, user-submitted messages from the internet.
It was a clever blend of physical spectacle and digital interaction—essentially a live, crowd-sourced broadcast that turned every visitor into a co-creator. My job was to figure out how to make that happen, reliably, in real time, and at scale.
Problem
This wasn’t a typical marketing campaign. It had never been done before in Brazil: real-time user interaction with a physical installation, live on the web. The key challenges:
Scalability: We anticipated thousands of concurrent users submitting and viewing messages.
Reliability: The system had to run 24/7 for 57 days without fail.
Real-time performance: Latency had to be minimal to preserve the sense of immediacy.
Bandwidth constraints: Most users were on low-speed connections.
Infrastructure: Brazil didn’t have proven solutions for streaming and interactive web media at this scale.
Solution
To bring this idea to life, I designed and deployed what would become the first Flash Media Server (FMS) in Brazil. We used Adobe Flash for client interaction, custom socket communication to enable real-time updates, and Flash Media Server to handle the streaming of messages. The architecture followed a hybrid model: FMS managed the live message relay while a backend system logged every interaction for moderation and analytics.
To optimize performance, we compressed the message payload to a strict 15-character maximum, drastically minimizing bandwidth requirements. I also developed custom dashboards and alerting scripts to maintain uptime and catch any issues before they could impact users.
This was 2005—cloud computing as we know it today didn’t exist. Everything ran on physical servers, with redundancy handled manually, and load balancing orchestrated through shell scripts and cron jobs. It was raw, hands-on infrastructure work, but it held up under pressure.
Go-to-market
The campaign launched with a mix of online teasers and word-of-mouth buzz. Visitors to the microsite (http://infectous.plugin.com.br/reality) could submit messages and watch them appear live on the monitor in the DM9DDB office. The buzz spread quickly:
Interactive virality: The act of seeing your words on a physical screen, glued to a wall, made users feel part of something real and magical.
Transparency: A making-of video reassured skeptics that the monitor was indeed suspended by glue alone.
Media attention: The uniqueness of the campaign brought in press and influencer attention organically.
Outcome
Over a million users engaged with the platform, stress-testing our infrastructure and validating the robustness of everything we had built. The system endured 57 continuous days of operation with zero downtime—something even many modern setups struggle to guarantee.
The campaign was awarded the Cannes Lions Grand Prix in the Cyber category, one of the most prestigious honors in global advertising, which helped elevate the visibility of everyone involved.
At the time, I was working for a hosting provider. Introducing Flash Media Server wasn’t just a technical novelty—it created a brand-new line of business for the company. We transitioned from serving static websites and basic applications to becoming enablers of real-time digital experiences. This infrastructure laid the groundwork for numerous subsequent high-impact projects. More brands began to explore interactive campaigns, and we were ready to support them. It marked a definitive shift in both our service offering and the industry’s technological expectations.
Looking back, this project was not just about glue or a clever ad—it was a milestone in real-time digital experiences. It was a prototype for the kind of immersive, tech-powered storytelling that has since become standard. And it all started with a bold idea, a lot of caffeine, and the first Flash Media Server in Brazil.