• by Steve Ellwanger , October 10, 2022

 

Latin coffee brand Café Bustelo is ramping up its use of music and 3D animation to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with a character called Lina, inspired by the wife of founder Gregorio Bustelo.

Two new spots from the Publicis agency focus on two passion points of the brand’s culture: arts and music.

In this spot titled “Salon,” Lina sings the song “Honey”—declaring in Spanish “My flavor is one of a kind, If you know how to play”—accompanied by other brightly colored, animated characters getting hair and nail treatments.

“Each frame on its own feels like a nice piece of art that you could hang on the wall,” Café Bustelo senior brand manager Edwardo Merino tells Marketing Daily.

In “Music Car,” Lina sings the same song but from the back of a vehicle overflowing with speakers.

Argentine singer Mia Matahoney provides the voice of Lina.

Roughly 50% of households that purchase Café Bustelo are populated by people of Hispanic origin, according to Merino. “Everything we design—from advertising to new product development—has to have that Hispanic/Latin angle.”

Café Bustelo considers itself a “can-centric” brand because of the way people have repurposed the red and yellow container with a triangular logo bearing the likeness of Angelina Bustelo—hence the character Lina, according to Merino.

“We knew it way before social media but now through social listening we see that consumers use the can like a plant pot. When we go to Etsy, we see people getting creative with uses of the cans.”

Likewise, Andres Rivera, the lead designer and illustrator of the new ads, “used empty Café Bustelo cans to store his toys while growing up,” adds Merino.

The idea was developed from PSOne, Publicis Groupe’s Power of One agency solution for The J.M. Smucker Company.