Americans love Mexican food, however many people are under the impression it’s too complicated and labor-intensive for everyday meals in a busy household. We wanted to share approachable recipes for classic Mexican meals made easy with the help of ingredients from one of Mexico’s most iconic and beloved food brands, La Costeña. Our goal was to reach a large American audience to expose them to delicious homestyle Mexican dishes, encourage them to incorporate Mexican foods into their weekly recipe repertoires, and to show how La Costeña can help bring authentic Mexican flavor while saving time. We also wanted to connect with fellow Mexicans and Latinos to share the recipes we love so much and that help us connect to our homelands with ingredients from Mexico that are now available in grocery stores all over the US.
La Costeña challenged three-time James Beard Award-winning chef, TV host, and New York Times bestselling cookbook author Pati Jinich to take classic Mexican foods and pump up the flavor using La Costeña’s products in a fun social video series called “Pump Up El Sabor.” Born and raised in Mexico City, and now living in the US, Pati was the perfect person to accept this challenge because she has been sharing her beloved Mexican cuisine for more than a decade in her long-running, nationally distributed PBS cooking/travel series “Pati’s Mexican Table.” An insightful interpreter of Mexican cuisine and culture, she has also published three best-selling cookbooks on Mexican food and her infectious personality has attracted an active and engaged social media following that achieves 16 million monthly impressions.
Pati grew up using La Costeña ingredients in her home in Mexico City and was enthusiastic to create and share 10 original recipes featuring their products, which she is thankful to be able to find in the US. To bring the recipes to life for both Pati’s and La Costeña’s audiences, videos of Pati demonstrating each of the recipes were filmed on a tight two-day production schedule. The videos were shot in her same home kitchen set where she films her PBS series with the same high production quality, but with a distinct look and feel just for “Pump Up El Sabor.” The recipe videos offer familiar favorites like Aztec Casserole, Chile Relleno Burritos, and Divorced Enchiladas; regional Mexican classics like Tarascan Soup and Drowned Eggs; and even a few Mexican-American mashups like Black Bean Smash Burgers and Charro Caviar Tostadas.
To optimize for social media, each recipe video was edited and delivered in two formats: horizontal 4-5 minute longer form videos for YouTube and Facebook, and vertical 60-90 second videos for Instagram Reels and TikTok. The videos were distributed monthly throughout 2023 as collaborative posts between Pati Jinich and La Costeña’s Mexico Rico accounts on Instagram and Facebook, as well as shared on Pati’s TikTok, YouTube channel, and website. La Costeña published all the corresponding recipes on MexicoRico.com with links shared with the posts so viewers can access the recipes and recreate Pati’s dishes in their own homes.
The “Pump Up El Sabor” video series drove nearly 1.8 Million impressions on social media in 2023 and the videos have over a million views. It proved to be highly engaging with posts on social media averaging a 7% engagement rate. We certainly feel we achieved our goal of reaching a large American audience with recipes that celebrate Mexican cuisine and flavors and tie in La Costeña’s products. So much so that La Costeña and Pati Jinich are continuing to make and share more “Pump Up El Sabor” videos together.
