Bauducco Foods
How Samba Rock helped Bauducco, a lead Brazilian food brand, to introduce a new category in the US and become top-of-mind
The back story
We started working with Bauducco Foods in 2014, before Samba Rock was born. Valter Klug was the Creative Director for the first US campaign of the brand while he was still working at Y&R Miami, and Bauducco was one of the inspirations for starting Samba Rock. Even though they had being selling their products in America for a few years, in 2014, Bauducco decided to start properly marketing for the US audiences. However, they had a small budget that didn’t allow them to hire a big agency or be taken seriously by a global advertising group.
After the success of Bauducco’s first US campaign, Valter started Samba Rock, helping other (at that time Brazilian) brands to expand their operations to the US, launching their first campaign in this competitive market.
The biggest challenge for Bauducco was that their main product is Panettone, a traditional Italian Christmas cake that had little to none consumer recognition in the US. So the work since then has been to create a new category, while making sure that Panettone would become synonymous of Bauducco.
2015 - 2016: Cake Boss
Samba Rock started working with Bauducco in 2016, when we became their Digital Agency Of Record for the US, and launched their website bauducco.com as well as their social media presence on Facebook and Instagram. That year we worked in partnership with Y&R on an integrated campaign leveraging Buddy Valastro, the “Cake Boss,” as the brand ambassador. Our work for Bauducco was so successful in 2016 that they decided to make Samba Rock their official Agency Of Record for all marketing and advertising efforts in 2017.
2017 - 2019:
Hard to Describe; Easy to Love
In 2017, Bauducco’s Headquarter in Brazil decided to hire Crispin Porter + Bogusky as their global branding agency, and together we launched a new campaign for Bauducco Panettone, with the motto: “Hard to describe; easy to love,” in an effort to grow the Panettone category and educate the American target audience. In 2017, Samba Rock went back to focus on digital and social media.
In 2018 we became once again responsible for all integrated marketing efforts. That year we on many fantastic ads, from Out-Of-Home in Times Square and in malls across the country to digital campaigns. The highlight of the year was a project we did leveraging a Times Square digital placement with a very emotional back story. In Brazil, Bauducco Panettone is shared with the people you love during Christmas, that is the time when families and loved ones reunite. The most similar time of the year in the US is Thanksgiving, so we decided to focus on families that were separated during this holiday. We took a drew to Times Square, in front of our billboard, and interviewed people with interesting life stories. We created and developed a system that allowed us to change the message of the billboard in real time, so we could write a message from the interviewed person to the loved one who was far away. We turned this into a viral video that reached millions of people and earned us Best in Show in 2019’s Addy Awards in Miami:
2020: Share a Slice of Togetherness
As with most of brands, 2020 was an atypical year for Bauducco. The focus was turned to digital and social media, with no investment in OOH advertising and in-store activations. A new campaign was launched, with the motto “Share a Slice of Togetherness.” Most of the budget was invested in Influencer Marketing. Samba Rock launched Bauducco’s presence on Pinterest, reaching millions of new consumers. We also launched a brand new Amazon Storefront, with tabs for Panettone, Wafers and Toasts, and optimized the product pages.
Also in 2020, Samba Rock created Bauducco’s first TV campaign for Bauducco Wafers, with 3D production of Lobo/Vetor, one of the most awarded 3D production companies in the world. The campaign was broadcast in English and Spanish in 2020 and 2021:
Results
Today, Bauducco is the top seller of Panettone both in the US and in the World. Every American who knows Panettone, relates it to the Bauducco brand. Last year, Bauducco Foods inaugurated its own factory in Miami, Florida, the first one outside of Brazil, and started the production of 3 flavors of wafers from this location.
Samba Rock remains Bauducco Foods’ main marketing and advertising partner in the region, and its long-term Agency Of Record.