Early 2023 may be remembered as the dawn of an age of miracles. Seemingly overnight, almost anyone could generate stunning, imaginative images through DALL·E or Midjourney. For brands, it hasn’t been so easy. With unpredictable outcomes, an inability to render accurate product imagery, and limited typesetting and retouching capabilities, most marketing uses have put the tech’s quirks at the center of the story. This project takes a disciplined approach to the generative opportunity, stitching together a high-tech, data-driven, rules-based workflow that produces powerful, brand-safe outputs at scale – 8,402 signs pointing a way forward for brands around the world.

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.

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 the map.

CREATIVE FOOD DESERVES CREATIVE DATA

From octopus to grasshopper, the creativity of Mexico’s street food is staggering. It’s also highly diverse, with each of these 8,402 stands selling unique and local recipes. Our data collection, and its application to mapping and generative AI, reflects the food’s variance and creativity while respecting a rich, traditional visual language.

THE NOT-SO-SECRET SAUCE

To drive word on the street, we turned to 18 earned television appearances, radio coverage, foodie influencers and +340 social media posts, and digital ads to get people exploring local food vendors via the Google Maps API-powered website.

ILLUMINATING A WAY FORWARD

The Greatest Guide puts big tech in service of small business, setting an industry example for generative point-of-sale creative at scale.

AUDIENCES

1. Jocheros and hamburgueseros – the street food vendors Bimbo has sold buns to for more than 78 years.

2. Street food consumers.

KNOWN DATA, NOVEL PURPOSE

We started by collecting data from thousands of street food vendors across Mexico, both directly, and using the IVY and RTM data management tools created by Bimbo’s business analysis center. That data had previously only been used for placing purchase orders for buns.

NAVIGATING INVISIBLE WALLS

The commercial application of generative AI at scale is challenging. Throughout development, we discovered invisible walls everywhere. For example, generative platforms are likely to render burgers that look like BigMacs, suggesting heavy bias in their training data. Because the street food on our menu doesn’t look like ubiquitous fast food, and often uses ingredients not well documented on the Internet, we had to push at the edges of what AI could actually render, through rules-based decisioning.

AUTOMATED ART DIRECTION

To produce 8,402 data-driven point-of-sale posters we combined Mexico’s rich tradition of sign painting with the scale and efficiency of artificial intelligence – we built up an innovative, iterative workflow between human art directors and our AI models. Rather than bespoke art direction, our approach was rules-based (e.g., the rule of thirds), which we rolled up into a programmatic creative system. For example, our automated drop shadow had to work for both long, wide hotdogs, and narrow, high hamburgers.

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

SCALE

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

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 – five versions for each

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

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

STREET CRED

By putting 8,402 of Bimbo’s customers 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 foodies. It also strengthened commercial relationships, including the trust and loyalty that Bimbo has built with some individual food vendors for more than 40 years.

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.