Chile isn’t Latin America’s biggest economy or even its biggest advertising market but since when did biggest mean the best? The long, ribbon-shaped country than runs the length of Argentina on the southern cone of the Americas has much to teach other markets.

It is one of the most prosperous economies in Latin America, and advertising spend has just overtaken Venezuela to make it the fifth-largest in the region. Chile’s media agencies also have an innovative track record, picking up top prizes at festivals such as Cannes, Festival El Sol in San Sebastian and the Ibero American Advertising Awards (Fiap).

“I’ve been managing the region for seven years and have never seen any innovation in the world that has not been done before here,” says Jean-Christophe Petit, the chief operating officer at Initiative Latin America.

The big four networks plan and buy the lion’s share of the media spend but no single player controls a dominant slice of the action and competition is fierce. Around 10% of total spend is direct deals between brands and media owners.

That, says Andres Israel, sales director of Metro International’s PubliMetro in Chile, leaves little room for smaller independents like Leniz & Lobato.

“The smaller agencies work with the bigger ones – they don’t have the power to provide the services clients want. They need to collude with the big agencies,” he says.

The industry is characterised by a lack of regulation, which gives agencies and media owners the opportunity to innovate outside the boundaries of their European or North American counterparts.

The amount of airtime, for example, that television stations can devote to advertising isn’t controlled and the boundaries between brands and programming are extremely flexible.

OMD arranged for the countdown to midnight on New Year’s Eve to be repeated by presenters across three different TV stations and some radio programmes for Loto. The idea was that some lottery winners had missed the countdown thanks to slow watches but still wanted to hear it, helping Loto highlight the fact that Loto winners can do anything.

Most of the media agencies operate divisions that specialise in programming, either to produce adfunded content or product placement vehicles.

“Here in our office we have a specific division of 12 people working on that,” says Carlos Ibanez, chief executive of Initiative Santiago. “We are working on scripts for TV and trying to go the TV network with the whole solution, saying this is the script that we want and these are the clients agreeing to be in the script.”

“The Latin people are very inventive and anti-conformist,” says Petit. “You can place whatever, wherever, in the way that you want.”

Another project by OMD saw a fivesecond ad for beer brand Cristal integrated into Star Wars. By negotiating the exact film frames at which the ad break would start the agency was able to plan an advert that appeared to continue the action so that Luke Skywalker ended up holding a bottle of Cristal Beer instead of alight sabre.

“I think the media owners have realised that it makes business sense [to be flexible], because by doing these activities you are not using the price as a main priority,” says Mauricio Sabagol, the chief executive of Omnicom’s OMD in Latin America.

He thinks that the rest of the world has much to learn from Chile’s example of working with media owners: “Working together… can produce more than working alone. I consider that the success of the situation in Chile is because all of the groups are working together.”

Mediaedge:cia did just that with its lateral thinking on product placement with TV’s Channel 13. The agency wanted to give the dog food brand owned Masterdog a presence on the reality TV La Granja Vip. The agency  came up with the idea of putting a real life dog in the house. The golden retriever, called Master, appeared in the show every day.

Agencies are also innovating outside of TV. Initiative, for example, built beaches in urban centres for Unilever brand Sedal as part of a campaign to promote the shampoo’s healthy, life enhancing properties.

According to the agency, Sedal became the number one brand in its category following the campaign, and sales volumes doubled.

Ambient media has also been used by other international brands with Whiskas running an award-winning campaign through Media Planning Group.

In order to demonstrate the lengths that cats will go in order to get their paws on the brand they really want the agency modified cars for an on-theroad stunt.

To the top of one car was fixed a giant bowl of Whiskas and on top of the other two were giant cats. The cars drove round the capital to give the impression that the cats were chasing the food.

Likewise Mediaedge:cia has taken flu remedy Cotibin directly to the point of sale. The agency signed a deal with Chile’s biggest pharmacy chain Andromaco to target sick people waiting in pharmacy queues for flu remedies, a market media first The slogan “Don’t wait Any Longer! Cotibin,” appeared on the back of the numbered tickets that people had to take whilst waiting to be served, as well as above the collection points. Sales shifted up by 500%, according to the agency.

Radio is also seeing some new ideas. A recent campaign for the singer Juanes and sponsor Pepsi used in-car radio screens as a media first – a format that is now being sold to other brands. Text saying ‘Pepsi brings you Juanes’ was  displayed when the singer’s song was being played on the station.

Initiative’s Ibanez argues that the emphasis on media creativity is becoming ever more important when it comes to new business, the lifeblood of any agency office, regardless of its location around the world.

“A big account isn’t going to move from one agency to another because an agency has good software – it’s all about innovation in media that makes the difference to winning accounts,” he says.