Café Bustelo Converts Cultural Governance Into Measurable Brand Growth

Ahead of the 2026 World Cup, Café Bustelo chose a grassroots, culturally rooted way into the moment. The brand briefed its agency partners in January 2025 on a campaign that would run without official tournament rights and draw on its Latin American heritage. The result was Game Face, which put more than one million limited-edition coffee cans in stores on June 1, 2026, each with a temporary face-tattoo kit built into the lid and artwork tied to Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. By early July, Café Bustelo ranked first among 48 brands gaining with U.S. World Cup fans.

Josh Williams, Director of Brand Experience, Coffee at The J.M. Smucker Company, runs marketing for the brand. Smucker acquired Café Bustelo in 2011 and has grown it to national distribution, though awareness has stayed near 35 percent. Yohan Daver, Executive Creative Director at BBH USA, led the work through PSOne, the Publicis Groupe agency collective that works on Smucker's business. Café Bustelo already sponsored Inter Miami and the Chicago Fire when the brief went out, and Williams asked for something on a larger scale.

"We told the team to bring to life a concept that was going to have to punch above its weight and provide a jolt to our brand awareness numbers. We thought this was pretty bold at the time, but when all is said and done, this activation needs to overshadow those official sponsors that focus so much on their bigger budget and less on building the electrifying brand experience that we knew we could for our consumers," says Williams. Smucker set two targets: a rise in awareness and growth in household penetration. The campaign had seventeen months to reach them, built on the brand's heritage rather than tournament rights or a celebrity face.

Governance before creative

Mexico was one of four countries in the campaign, included because of the size of the Mexican American population in the United States. Colombia and Brazil were included for their ties to the brand's coffee heritage, and Brazil's coffee culture was familiar to several Brazilians on the campaign team. Argentina went in as the reigning world champions. All four choices, and every piece of work that followed, passed through a standing group inside the agency before it went anywhere else. "Within our agency we have a creative council made up of people from so many of these countries," Daver explains. "Every piece of work, every communication, every social post has been gut checked by people. It has never been questioned by us. If someone says they don't like it, it doesn't go out."

The same standard applied to production hires. Four artists produced the can and tattoo artwork under Brand New School creative director Andres Rivera: Raul Urias, Mel Cerri, Josefina Schargorodsky, and Tami Hadid, each from the country their designs represent. The film was directed by a Mexican director and shot in Mexico City, the editor was Argentinian, and the music house was based in Argentina. "It starts with ensuring that you truly have a diverse team of people who bring different perspectives and different voices," says Daver. "The second bit is not thinking we know it all, despite how diverse that team might be. We make sure we are gut checking work with consumers and actually getting notes back from them."

Roughly half the Game Face media plan used tactics Smucker runs every year, including linear television, digital, social, and influencer work. The other half included a partnership with the soccer podcast Men in Blazers, sampling and tattoo application at Loews Hotels, and watch parties tied to the brand's Chicago Fire sponsorship. "One of the things we champion here at Smucker is that we have leaders who say, make me feel a little uncomfortable when you're bringing a recommendation," Williams says. "Show me that you are thinking outside the box and you are being bold in your thinking."

Packaging set the sequence

Café Bustelo is distributed nationally, and changing the artwork on the can meant committing to production runs long before the tournament field was set. Work on the packaging started before all four countries had qualified. "One of the reasons we planned this one year in advance, why the work starts so early, was we knew that impacting packaging at this scale takes time," notes Daver. "Long before a lot of people were kicking off on this, we already had an idea and had started building it. For a company of that size, to do an idea of that scale, you have to give yourself time, which comes from the ability to plan and get ahead."

The lid was custom engineered to carry the kit. A tamper-evident neck band secures the lid, and removing it frees a paperboard disc with an accordion-folded sleeve of eleven tattoos attached underneath and a QR code linking to a video tutorial on applying and removing them. "When we presented this idea we called it a pactivation, because it is an activation coming from the pack," Daver adds. "Our films are beautiful, the communication was amazing, we had murals, we had all of this, but none of that can exist without the pack. We got social from the packaging. We got the murals from the packaging. It all stems from that."

Smucker asked BBH to plan the campaign outward from the shelf. Cans shipped to retailers on June 1, ten days ahead of the tournament's opening match, and the films, murals, and out-of-home buy followed them. "That is one of those times where we push on the agency to plan from shelf to screen instead of from screen to shelf," Williams points out. "We were thinking about that purchase moment. We were very deliberate in pushing our advertising to start at the point of sale, and then for us to build the surround around that was key to this execution."

Judgment stays in the loop

Smucker describes its approach as insight-led. The observation behind Game Face was that fans of Latin nations treat World Cup matches the way American fans treat the Super Bowl, including painting their faces on match day. Williams uses AI tools and consumer data in that work, and he's specific about how far they take a decision. "It's very much a data partnership," Williams maintains. "It's not becoming a brainless cog and just letting the data drive it. You have to have the worldly experience to know how to ultimately own it and run your campaigns that way."

Café Bustelo was part of Lollapalooza several years ago and has plans to return to music festivals. Williams counts art, sport, and music as equally longstanding parts of the brand's identity, and Daver describes soccer as one option among several. "The ability to identify where you can play comes from strong client systems, strong strategic partners, strong inputs, and planning that happens long before a campaign is ever thought upon," observes Daver. "It's a bigger organizational change."

Smucker tracks household penetration and independent brand tracking published in early July measured gains in ad awareness, buzz, and consideration. Smucker hasn't yet decided whether Game Face returns for the Women's World Cup in Brazil, and Williams has asked the agency to build murals into the brand's annual planning. "Consumers can really tell when brands genuinely understand the communities they're speaking to," Williams concludes. "Investing in authentic partnerships while letting that cultural insight guide you will produce stronger creative work, and ultimately, as we saw with Game Face, it produces stronger business outcomes as well."