With a 2015 Super Bowl ad—and a catchy eight-note song—Avocados From Mexico endeared themselves to football fans. Over the next eight years, the brand became a constant presence during the big game, airing seven more catchy ads.
“We wanted to use that platform to launch our communications strategy,” says CEO Álvaro Luque, who joined Avocados From Mexico in 2014, a year after the organization formed as a nonprofit to promote U.S. imports from thousands of Mexican farmers. “The Super Bowl continues to be our number one consumption date, or special event, in the United States, and it continues to grow. In fact, last year it was the most consumed Super Bowl in our history.”
But Avocados From Mexico did not appear in last season’s or the year before’s Super Bowl ads, and will again be absent from the Feb. 8 broadcast. Instead, the group is sweeping the College Football Playoffs.
It’s not that Super Bowl ads don’t drive networks anymore. From 2014 to 2021, U.S. imports of Mexican avocados doubled, reaching 1.1 billion kilograms (about 4 kilograms per consumer per year), and the organization attributes much of that increase to its efforts to raise awareness among both grocery shoppers and retailers. Currently, in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, Mexico ships a truckload of avocados to the United States every six minutes, according to the group, and retail sales volume during game week is 32% higher than average.
However, growth slowed, and Avocados From Mexico now believes a new strategy for American football can lead to better results.
From the beginning, Luque and his organization saw opportunities in the sport, given its long association with guacamole on game days. For example, Avocados From Mexico recently conducted a survey with market research firm Quantilope, which revealed that 44% of American football fans “always or almost always” include this dip in their Sunday meals, and that one in three consider it their favorite game day snack. Additionally, guacamole is a particularly good dish for driving sales, and recipes often call for three or more avocados.
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American football also has a seasonal advantage. In summer, avocados grown in Mexico compete for shelf space with shipments from California and other countries, such as Chile, Colombia and Peru, that produce this vegetable-like fruit. But only Mexico, with its unique microclimates, has substantial year-round avocado crops, raising the U.S. avocado market share to more than 90% in cold-weather months. Therefore, the easiest way to ensure that buyers purchase a Mexican avocado is to close the sale after the start of the American football calendar.
“Have you heard someone in the supermarket say, ‘Wait a minute, these are from Peru, where are the avocados from Mexico?’” says David M. Carter, a sports marketing consultant and adjunct professor at the USC Marshall School of Business, who notes that the automotive and film industries have similar seasonal approaches to their marketing along with big national events like the Super Bowl. “Avocados From Mexico has adopted an approach that allows them to market to all links in the purchasing chain.”
With that potential, the organization invested $13 million in football marketing during fiscal year 2025, nearly a quarter of its total marketing budget.
Of course, NBC reportedly charged between $7 million and $8 million for 30 seconds of airtime during the upcoming Super Bowl, and that price doesn’t even include the commercials’ production costs or celebrity spokesperson fees. Such an investment would leave Avocados From Mexico with little money to spend on other marketing activities throughout the year.
Financial pressure helped the organization reach college football, where it was a title sponsor of the 2023 Cure Bowl and became an official partner of the College Football Playoff, a deal now in its third season. This year, the group’s campaign includes fan promotions and sweepstakes, as well as ads and in-store displays featuring comedian Rob Riggle as the “Guacamole Guru.”
Giving up the Super Bowl, which set a record by averaging nearly 128 million American viewers on television and streaming in February, was not a decision Luque made lightly. Without that highly visible platform, the audience for Avocados From Mexico’s social videos has not recovered the highs reached in January 2021, February 2022 and February 2023, months in which its Super Bowl ads began hitting the internet, and the group’s earned media value on social apps is 47% lower than three years ago, according to marketing agency Two Circles.
But the transition to college football is not limited to a question of cost.
For example, while avocado sales used to skyrocket in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, they saw a significant decline in the weeks following the game. Avocados From Mexico has sought to cultivate a longer presence in American football, and the college version offers “almost 1,600 games that are not tied to a single date like the Super Bowl,” Luque says.
“Last year, our consumption between October, November and December grew by 6%, reaching the all-time high for avocados in that season,” adds Luque, “so it is really driving volume.”
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Additionally, college football has an advantage with the demographics of its fans, including a more equal distribution between men and women. “We know that the main buyer of avocados during the American football season is a woman, but the main consumer of guacamole during the American football season is a man,” says Luque.
College football fans are also younger than Super Bowl viewers, consistent with Avocados from Mexico survey results indicating that Gen Z football fans are more likely than any other generation to choose guacamole as their favorite dip, over competitors like salsa, queso and ranch dressing.
However, the biggest advantage of college football is its regionality, which allows the business group to target specific areas of the country. “The avocado category has been dominated, by far, by one region: the West Coast,” says Luque. “But in the last four or five months, the number one region for avocado consumption in the US is the South Atlantic, an ideal place for college football.”
Capitalizing on this trend, Avocados From Mexico has partnered with the University of Georgia for the past two seasons, appearing on signs at Sanford Stadium, activating in nearby grocery stores, and filming videos and serving guacamole samples on campus.
Luque believes the organization’s efforts are already bearing fruit, citing data from a fan survey that indicates the brand has a roughly 25% direct association with college football, well below Dr Pepper’s 69%, but in line with brands like Modelo and Nissan, which have been investing in the sport for much longer.
In the future, Luque says he would like to expand to the Midwest, an area where avocado consumption is low. “For years we sponsored the Packers in Green Bay, and what we did in that stadium was very basic guacamole, and for a lot of people it was like Disneyland; they had never seen it,” he recalls with a smile.
Any expansion of the group’s marketing will depend on the unique configuration of its budget, which is directly linked to the import volume of the previous fiscal year. But with Avocados From Mexico currently projecting a monster crop, Luque hopes to have enough money to return to the Super Bowl, along with a strong presence in college football, in 2027.
“We are a true example of a program that needs to prove that marketing works,” says Luque, “because if we don’t do our promotions and advertising well, we’re not going to get the volume we need and our budget will be reduced. So there’s nothing I can do other than be effective in the way I present my programs to the market.”
This article was originally published in Forbes US
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