Big game, big idea: AlaCena’s Super Bowl hack

Lima, February 9. – The Super Bowl is not just the most-watched sporting event in the world. It is arguably one of the advertising industry’s most significant creative showcases, where brands compete for attention with high-production pieces. This year, AlaCena decided to play that game on its own terms.

The proposal was not born from traditional creativity, but from a strategic media insight: was it possible to hack the Super Bowl without being an official sponsor or producing an exclusive commercial for the event? The answer was yes, provided there was a deep understanding of the cultural moment.

The brand identified a trend already dominating the global conversation—the now-famous bear—and decided to lean into it through a conceptual rather than literal approach. The key was aligning three pillars to create a memorable piece: the brand’s big idea + cultural trend + media momentum.

The starting point was AlaCena’s creative concept: “Hagamos todo aún más rico” (Let’s make everything even tastier), which addresses a specific category challenge: many dishes are already delicious on their own, and with AlaCena, they can be even better. Thus, the brand seized the moment to bring its promise of elevating flavor to life during the Super Bowl.

From a media perspective, the brand capitalized on the halftime hype by allocating a media buy that aired in Peru and other countries in the region, including investment in cable and the Disney Plus app. AlaCena's agencies, Fahrenheit and Mediahub, joined forces for this task.

“Yes, you deserve taste. You deserve the best flavor with AlaCena.”

Daniel Cuneo, Director of the Food Platform at Alicorp, commented: “That’s where the spot’s concept originates, leveraging recognizable global advertising codes with a line that reinforces a simple yet powerful truth: flavor is not an extra; it is a right.”

For the executive, the timing was perfect. This year's Super Bowl broke viewership records, driven by one of the most-watched halftime shows in recent years, with Peru being one of the markets with the highest viewership levels. AlaCena took advantage of that peak attention with a 100% geolocated ad buy, maximizing impact without sacrificing efficiency.

The execution included four airings: two before the halftime show and two immediately after, along with complementary cable ads also segmented for the local market. Being present just before and after the event's most anticipated moment was no coincidence—it was part of the hack.

On the creative side, the project also brings the importance of technology into the conversation. The content was developed using Artificial Intelligence and produced in just one week, proving that brands today can react to culture with real-time speed, without depending on long production cycles. The campaign was created alongside the agency Fahrenheit, using an agile work model focused on impact rather than investment volume.

Cuneo added: “The result leaves us with a clear lesson: it’s no longer about just buying a slot in a commercial break or the moment itself, but about understanding it. AlaCena wasn’t ‘in’ the Super Bowl, but it was in the conversation. And it did so with flavor, speed, and an agile reading of the game.”