Behind the bright lights of Hollywood, local street food vendors operate in the shadows, trying to make a living while abiding by strict city regulations. As a champion of the hustle, Rockstar brought attention to the plight of vendors with a Mercado-style event featuring local tamaleros and their new custom-designed street-legal food carts. Rockstar re-created a slice of the Eastside with interactive installations, a localized gallery, customized aprons, a published newspaper and geo-tagged digital stickers to celebrate the street food vendor community. This experience expanded the brand's ethos and proved it could make a real impact on peoples' lives.

Rockstar Energy is all about championing the everyday hustle. So when Super Bowl LVI hit its hometown of LA, they wanted to celebrate locals who embody that California work ethic. The Latino community not only shapes LA culture in profound ways, but also makes up a large customer base for Rockstar. Therefore, the brand wanted to focus on elevating the Latino community in a way that could bring their hustle stories to a larger audience. With a limited budget in a brand-saturated week, how could we cut through and generate earned media while gaining respect from the community?

In LA, street food vendors not only face attacks and robberies, but also strict city regulations that prevent them from operating without costly licenses and unrealistic food cart specs. As an advocate for those that hustle, Rockstar Energy saw an opportunity to bring greater awareness to their plight, while also helping entrepreneurs in the process. In partnership with non-profit Revolution Carts, Rockstar provided LA street food vendors with brand new, fully-licensed food carts, to help them level up and bring Rockstar Energy drinks to every block that these vendors operate. To make each cart an ode to the city, and catch the eye of pedestrians, some of LA’s most renowned street artists customized each one with a design inspired by the street food vendor tradition. The initiative culminated in an immersive Mercado-style experience that celebrated the community and brought out multiple news organizations to amplify the cause.

Our goal was to build meaningful connections with people so that when we say Rockstar embodies hustle, our audience knows that it’s a real commitment, not just brandspeak. We saw an important community in need and we jumped to action. Street vendors are critical to the identity and culture of any city, and nowhere is that more true than Los Angeles. They represent hustle, but local regulations were keeping them from doing what they love (and keeping their customers hungry).

We believed that a fully-licensed street cart could empower a street vendor to tell their story while giving Rockstar a canvas to do the same. The strategy was to create long-lasting, physical representations of the brand that were integral to the community and those who embody hustle. That gave us the credibility to be in the conversation, and facilitated incredible content across social, digital and experiential channels.

Rockstar Energy built partnerships with credible local non-profits and media outlets to identify street food vendors whose hustle hit a roadblock due to strict city regulations. Tapping into LA's rich street artist community, we paired each street food vendor with a renowned local artist to customize their cart with designs inspired by their personal stories. To document the stories, we worked with director David Camarena, editor Dior Rodriguez and Grammy-nominated producer Cobaine Ivory, who worked pro-bono as a testament to the project. As a celebratory moment that paid homage to East LA's cultural traditions, we created an immersive Mercado-style experience with interactive installations, personalized aprons, and a physical newspaper diving deeper into the cause.

59M+ earned media impressions

$500,000 invested into the community

$19M lifetime value created for LA street vendors

Overwhelming support from Social Media community

All with $0 media spent