Shakira’s Sandwich Serenade – A Hit For Lay’s In Mexico

From superstar Beyonce to ultra-hip producer BZRP, Shakira’s collaborations have helped define her stardom. Now, Lays in Mexico bring audiences her greatest collaboration yet – a duet with singing sandwich Sr. Cheese. The megastar and the meal share a yearning ballad, the message of which is – sandwiches and Sabritas chips are meant to be together.

The animated sandwich has a pedigree of his own, of course – Sr. Cheese was in a highly successful Lays commercial in 2021. As for Shakira, three decades into her career the Queen of Latin music is still one of the region’s most popular stars, and she began a partnership with Lays this year, making a cinematic ad centering on a high-speed car chase.

So what might seem like an unusual team-up is a natural one from the brand’s perspective. What do audiences make of Shakira’s sandwich serenade?

They love it – it gets 4.1-Stars showing strong long-term brand-building potential, with exceptional short-term sales Spike potential too. A big driver of the positive response is Surprise, with almost 40% of viewers stating that as their main response – when you look at the comments for that emotion you can see that Surprise in this case is strongly driven by the Shakira guest spot and the originality of the whole ad.

That tracks with what creative agency Isla felt when they made the ad for Lays. Celeste Dalairac, Isla’s Regional Creative Director, said ““We knew we had a ‘hit’ on our hands and it’s great to see people feel that way too, and of course, Shakira makes everything better.”

It’s a quote that nails the appeal of the ad, which is a very strong example of how to use a celebrity well. Hundreds of ads feature celebrities, but the best are smart about how they use them – not just as an endorsement or to add glamour, but to tie in with the story of the ad and spark emotion.

When you have a celebrity on board, you need to do two things. The first is use them for what they are famous for – in this case Shakira is a famous singer and superstar and the ad puts that at its center. But the second is to use them in a larger than life or surreal way – give them something to do which audiences can only see in your ad. Shakira singing a song – that’s what we expect, but we can see it a hundred different ways. Shakira singing a song to an animated sandwich – only Sabritas can give you this.