Spicy Herdez Traditions YouTube Ads Use Flavor, Heavy Bass, Heritage, and Iconic Neon Imagery to Appeal to Latinx Consumers
January 31, 2023
In 2019, Herdez Traditions launched a multi-media re-brand campaign with the phrase, “Mexican is Herdez.” Three years later, this metaphor still circulates on socials as short, vibrant, and bass-heavys.
What we love about this campaign, created by BBDO, is that it braids ancient and traditional Mexican iconography with contemporary sound, taste, and lifestyle. It underscores that Herdez is more than just a condiment brand, it is part and parcel of today’s larger culture, at which Latinx culture is on the leading edge.
In a recent study, State of Consumer Engagement 2022, Horowitz Research illuminates consumer perceptions of media representation and the impact on brand consideration. There is strong appeal for content that shows the experiences and lifestyles of people from different cultures and with characters/casts that represent the diversity of the United States among the 1,800 consumers 18+ surveyed.
About half (46%) of those surveyed enjoy when a story “gives me a glimpse of the experiences and lifestyles of people and communities from cultures that are not my own.” Moreover, when considering content diversity, the majority of Latinx consumers appreciate the inclusion of characters “like me” (65%) and realistic and nuanced portrayals of Hispanic/Latinx culture and communities (63%), much like the Herdez campaign strives to do.
In this Herdez campaign video, neon lights streak across black backgrounds revealing triangles that evoke Mayan pyramids, gods, goddesses, elders adorned in gold jewelry with a modern spin in a club-like dreamscape. Young women in beautifully rich dresses atop horses waving oversized burgundy flags that flutter towards the viewer and, of course, salsa and its star raw ingredients. tomato, cilantro, and jalapeño invoke the symbolic colors of the Mexican flag: green (hope), white (union), and red (blood of our heroes). Other words that appear are LOUD and STRONG. If “Mexican is Herdez,” then Herdez salsa carries this meaning through the language of flavor. The images are commanding, reanimating, and reimagining robust Mexican imagery and art history, making the ancient ancestral contemporary.
Beneath the music, we hear a storm brewing, and the entire video is set to the riff of the reggaetón song “Amiga Date Cuenta,” by Mexican non-binary internet sensation Sailorfag, a song warning women about toxic relationships. By showcasing a queer non-binary artist, Herdez seamlessly blends LGBTQIA+ inclusion into campaign message and metaphor.
If resonant Latinx representation were a sound, it would be an impending storm whose thunder heralds the influence of diverse and inclusive Latinx culture on American culture and on traditional/contemporary Latinx cultures worldwide.
About Author
A. Anthony, Ph.D., a Cultural Insights Strategist at Horowitz Research, is a qualitative researcher and a community educator with a Ph.D. in American Studies. Their work focuses on uplifting and documenting the everyday lives of under-represented, under-resourced, and hyper-stigmatized communities in the urban United States.