The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2020–2022
iFood ran a covert propaganda machine against its own delivery drivers' strikes
Fake driver profiles, a meme page, an agent with a banner at the protest: 30+ agency documents show iFood paid to empty Brazil's delivery-worker strikes.
iFood · Benjamim Comunicação · Social Qi · 2022-04
What happened
On 1 July 2020, delivery drivers struck across 13 Brazilian states and the Federal District — the first big 'Breque dos Apps' — demanding higher pay per delivery, covid protection and better conditions. That night iFood, Brazil's dominant delivery app, answered with an open letter and a primetime TV ad. Eight days later, a Facebook page called 'Não Breca Meu Trampo' — Don't Block My Gig — appeared.
The page was not organic. Between July 2020 and at least November 2021, two agencies — Benjamim Comunicação and Social Qi — ran what internal documents called the 'LADO B': fake driver profiles on Twitter and Facebook (internally, 'VIPs'), a meme page called 'Garfo na Caveira,' infiltration of 15 WhatsApp groups with 19,000 messages analysed, and scripted videos recorded by hired drivers. The rule, in one agency memo: never sign it as iFood, 'so nobody gets suspicious.'
On 16 April 2021, an agency contractor posing as a driver hung a 'vaccines for delivery drivers now' banner at a São Paulo protest — a move designed to redirect the strike's narrative, and logged in the client report as a success when real news outlets repeated the line. In June 2021 the two pages reached 3.16 million people. Between April and August, R$12,232.73 went to boosting posts.
On 4 April 2022, Agência Pública published the machine in full, citing more than 30 internal documents. iFood said it had seen the data only on publication and 'does not condone' false information or robots; it promised an internal review. The agencies denied wrongdoing. Within weeks the MPF, the federal prosecutor's office, demanded explanations within 15 days and ordered the agencies to preserve the profiles; the labour prosecutor's office and a São Paulo city council inquiry opened parallel probes.
Why it happened
- The strike threatened the founding myth — drivers as free entrepreneurs, not workers — so the answer was narrative, not negotiation: a TV ad that night, a covert operation eight days later.
- Outsourcing let the client keep clean hands: the agencies ran the fake profiles and the street infiltration, and iFood's statement after exposure was only that it 'does not condone' such practices.
- The agencies documented everything for the client — 30+ reports, posting schedules, boosting receipts — so the proof of the covert operation was as thorough as the operation itself.
- The vaccine-banner infiltration was logged as a success: real media repeated the planted line. Success in the client report became liability in the inquiry, because it proved intent.
The lesson
Astroturfing your own workforce buys silence until the invoice surfaces. The agencies kept reports, schedules and receipts — the moment a reporter asked, the 'LADO B' became the whole story.
Aftermath
The case became Brazil's reference scandal for astroturfing — covert corporate propaganda dressed as grassroots opinion — and entered the proceedings of São Paulo's inquiry into app-work conditions. For the advertising trade it left an unanswered question: when an agency builds a client's covert operation and the client says it never authorised it, the documents are the only witness.
Sources
- Agência Pública — A máquina oculta de propaganda do iFood
- SBT News — MPF investiga iFood por suposta campanha contra entregadores
- Poder360 — iFood atuou contra atos de entregadores, diz Agência Pública
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