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Havana-Cultura.com, a Portal on Cuban Art

Posted on August 25, 2008
David Billion

Have you heard about Havana-Cultura, the new portal on Cuban art? It’s a window on Cuban culture in its purest form and is a one of a kind website that has been recognized for its excellence. However, its success is not only due to its unique content. In fact, the idealization of this flash website was another one of the reasons that it received the Cyber Crystal Grand Prize at the Meribel Ad Festival.

Discover Cuban culture

Set to a festive theme, the Havana-Cultura website abounds with interesting information on Cuban art. Don’t expect to find your typical Cuban clichés here. What you will find is a regularly updated website that promotes contemporary Cuban culture via unique personal accounts. What is behind it all? A TV production team, photographers, journalists and communication experts that travel to Cuba in search of fascinating people. With a simple click of the mouse, you can access endless information on young musicians, sculptors, fashion designers, writers and dancers from Havana.

Brand tact

This website was born thanks to Havana Club, the famous rum distillery and company. Nonetheless, the brand has decided to remain in the shadows and put the spotlight on discovering Cuban art. The brand has taken an interesting stance and has made it a point to provide Internet users with an original window on Cuba and Havana in particular.

"We are not directly selling anything through this website. The website has one aim: to get people interested in the brand and Cuba," says François Renié, Communications Director at Havana Club International.

Google indexes the full flash website

Havana-cultura.com is flash-based, a widespread form of technology that nowadays doesn’t ensure optimal website referencing.

"We had to follow a special technical process to make sure that the website’s pages would be indexed on search engines via a tracking system," explains Bertrand Hamelin, executive SEO at LSF Interactive. It is a flash tracking based system available online, as well as an html tracking system so that search engines are able to "recognize" content.

No promotional campaign was organized for the website’s launch. Instead, the brand initially decided to appeal to the English speaking Cuban community, opting for a WOM approach. Now Havana Club, together with BuzzParadise, has decided to reach out to European bloggers (in France, Germany, Italy and Spain) in order to reach a wider public. Not only this, but their ingenious indexing strategy accounts for half of the website’s traffic. This is one initiative that has not gone unnoticed.