A MARKET GONE STALE

In 2019, seven out of 10 hamburgers and nine out of 10 hotdogs consumed in Mexico were made with Bimbo buns, with street food vendors (dubbed “Special Channels”) representing 33% of the company’s total sales. But as macroeconomic pressures and fast food competition intensified post-COVID, that percentage fell by 8% – resulting in an annual deficit of $192M USD for the company.

BRIEF: HELP BIMBO CUSTOMERS SELL MORE STREET FOOD

How could Bimbo help its commercial allies increase sales, while strengthening brand awareness among both food vendors and end consumers alike?

OBJECTIVES

1. Increase visibility and drive traffic to street food carts, shops, and stalls across Mexico.

2. Recover 10% of sales participation in Special Channels.

BUDGET

Approximately $140,000 USD in production, and $612,000 in paid media.

SCALE

National, with 8,402 food vendors served across Mexico’s 31 states.

THE GREATEST GUIDE

The world’s first fully-generative search and signage system designed to put 8,402 of Mexico’s most creative hamburger and hotdog stands on foodies’ map. Supported by an AI-powered creative workflow, a Google Maps API-integrated consumer website, nationwide earned media, extraordinary street food recipes, and the world’s largest bakery, The Greatest Guide to Jochos & Burgers gives local businesses an edge against encroaching fast food chains.

AUDIENCES

Jocheros and hamburgueseros – the street food vendors that Bimbo’s been ​​serving for more than 78 years – and everyone who enjoys their creations.

BRAND RELEVANCE

Bimbo has supplied buns to millions of food vendors across nearly eight decades, building trust and loyalty with its clients. To support them in their culinary creations, we saw an opportunity to give them exposure and attract their target audience, unlocking the power of big tech for small business.

AUTOMATED ART DIRECTION

We created the world’s first workflow designed to turn data into prompts and prompts into food paintings. To deliver point-of-sale posters for 8,402 businesses, we combined Mexico’s rich tradition of sign painting with the scale and efficiency of artificial intelligence, cooking up an iterative workflow between human art directors and our AI models. Rather than bespoke art direction, our approach was rules-based and rolled up into a programmatic creative system.

GENERATIVE STACK

OpenAI CLIP – image-to-text, to create prompts from selected images

OpenAI Dall-E2 – text-to-image to produce base food paintings, backgrounds

RmBGAI – for automated close cropping

Pillow – Python for compositing (essentially programmatic Photoshop)

Wand – Python bindings for ImageMagick, for compositing

Stability AI – upscale API, for increasing resolution to poster-size print specs

PROGRAMMATIC PRODUCTION DESIGN VIA PYTHON

Drop shadow

Vignetting layer

Rough border layer

High-pass sharpening filter

Scanned, hand painted-type

BUSINESS IMPACT

• +12,200,000 impressions across Mexico

• +77,000 online map visits to date

• 42,010 unique point-of-sale images generated for hotdog and burger carts, shops, and street vendors.

• +23% increase in sales among Bimbo’s “Special Channels” compared to the 10% target (+120%)

• Set a new +180% week-over-week nationwide sales record

STREET CRED

By putting 8,402 local businesses on an online map accessible to all, we not only supported the economic livelihood of thousands of families across Mexico, we also created a strong halo effect for the Bimbo brand. The Greatest Guide established an authentic connection between a multinational bakery giant and Mexico’s vibrant community of independent street food vendors and their fans.

SMALL BUSINESS, BIG IMPORTANCE

In Mexico, a country of more than 123M people, the informal food sector is an integral part of the economy and culture. According to INEGI, more than 2.5M people are involved in informal commerce, including selling food on the streets. This sector represents approximately 30% of the country’s GDP and generates indirect employment through a sustainable business model, contributing significantly to the national economy.

HERITAGE & GRAPHIC DESIGN

The visual culture of Mexico’s hand-painted signs has endured over generations and across regions, playing a critical role in helping small businesses promote themselves. When using technology to create marketing materials for our partners, we let tradition dictate – we used the same graphic codes that jocheros and hamburgueseros already know and feel comfortable using to give thousands of stands and locations their unique visual identity.