Bauducco's Panettone Thanksgiving at Times Square activation used a 4,000-sq-ft digital billboard to display real-time holiday messages in November 2018.
Bauducco Panettone Brings Thanksgiving to the Heart of Times Square
Bauducco's Panettone Thanksgiving at Times Square is an experiential campaign created by Miami-based agency Samba Rock in November 2018, in which passersby and influencers in New York City recorded live Thanksgiving messages for distant loved ones that were broadcast in real time on a large-format digital billboard at the heart of Times Square in the United States, according to Prnewswire.
Panettone is a holiday staple in Brazilian and Italian households, yet its association with family togetherness translates directly to the American Thanksgiving tradition. Bauducco and Samba Rock built the campaign around that cultural bridge, positioning the brand not as a foreign confectionery import but as a natural participant in one of the United States' most family-centred occasions, according to Marketingdive. The activation launched approximately one week before Thanksgiving 2018, according to Marketing Dive, placing it squarely within the peak emotional window of the holiday season.
The centrepiece of the campaign was The Cube, a roughly 4,000-square-foot full-motion digital display in Times Square, as reported by Marketing Dive and confirmed through a public announcement made by Outfront Media on November 14, 2018. For four hours, Bauducco's production partner Lemonade TV filmed interviews with members of the public who shared personal Thanksgiving messages, and those messages appeared on The Cube in real time, turning a commercial media placement into what amounted to a public love letter to the American family, according to Sambarock Us. A Bauducco press release issued November 16, 2018, via PR Newswire documented the execution and quoted key figures from both the brand and the agency. The campaign sits at a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting strong conceptual clarity and culturally resonant execution balanced against the limited scale of a single-day experiential moment.
Bauducco entered the United States market around 2014, according to Samba Rock's own account, at a time when American consumers were broadly unfamiliar with panettone as a product category, according to Brazilcore. The initial strategy, as documented by Samba Rock, focused on product education before brand advertising — a sequencing that reflects the real challenge of introducing an imported confectionery tradition into a market already saturated with established holiday food brands, according to LinkedIn.
By 2018, Bauducco had moved past the education phase and was competing for emotional relevance during the holiday season. In the United States, the cookie and sweet baked goods segment is formidable: U.S. cookie dollar sales reached approximately $8.5 billion for the 52 weeks ending March 25, 2018, up roughly 2.7 percent, according to Supermarket News. Within that landscape, Bauducco faces competition from both mass-market snack players such as Pepperidge Farm and from imported European brands that hold longstanding equity in the premium gifting segment. Positioning panettone around Thanksgiving rather than Christmas alone was a deliberate attempt to widen the brand's seasonal window and claim territory no domestic competitor had thought to occupy.
The choice of Times Square as the activation venue was equally strategic. Times Square draws tens of millions of visitors annually, including a disproportionate share of Latin American and European tourists and New York residents who carry personal associations with panettone from their home countries. By staging the live event there, Samba Rock ensured that the audience most likely to feel an immediate emotional connection was organically present, while the spectacle of the billboard itself generated broader awareness beyond those directly engaged on the ground.
Samba Rock Creative Director Valter Klug led the creative concept alongside Art Director Piare Encina and Copywriter Dubraska Gonçalves, according to production credits documented by PR Newswire and Samba Rock. The campaign was produced under an unusually compressed timeline: the technical system enabling real-time message display was developed and tested with Outfront Media in less than one week, as reported by Marketing Dive.
Lemonade TV, a United States-based video production company, handled the filmed interview component, with producer Narmine Yamaguchi overseeing on-ground production. The format they chose — unscripted, emotionally candid video messages recorded in a busy public space — introduced a layer of authentic unpredictability that scripted advertising rarely achieves. People who could not be with family for Thanksgiving were invited to speak directly to their loved ones, and those words appeared immediately on The Cube, a 4,000-square-foot full-motion digital display operated through Outfront Media, as confirmed by the public announcement made via PR Newswire on November 14, 2018.
The creative logic is clean: Bauducco's panettone is framed as an object that travels across distances and connects people, much like the messages being broadcast on the billboard. The brand does not interrupt the emotional moment; it enables it. That restraint is significant in a category where confectionery advertising frequently defaults to appetite appeal or nostalgic pastiche. Samba Rock instead built a piece of live content that functioned simultaneously as a media placement, a social media asset, and a public gesture — three outputs from a single four-hour activation window. Bauducco Marketing Director Erik Volavicius was quoted in the PR Newswire launch release alongside Valter Klug, underscoring the alignment between client and agency on the campaign's emotional intent.
No verified performance data for the Bauducco Panettone Thanksgiving at Times Square campaign is publicly available in terms of reach figures, earned media value, sales uplift, or social engagement metrics. The absence of published numbers is not unusual for a single-market experiential activation of this scope, and it does not diminish the structural case for effectiveness.
Structurally, the campaign operates with several compounding advantages. The Times Square location guaranteed a high-volume, high-diversity audience during one of the busiest travel periods in the United States. The real-time broadcast mechanic created a genuine incentive for participants to share the experience organically, extending the campaign's reach beyond the four-hour window of the live activation. The involvement of influencers alongside general members of the public, as noted in coverage by Marketing Dive, introduced a layer of amplification through social channels that a purely out-of-home execution would not have generated on its own.
The campaign also achieved something measurable in qualitative terms: it was covered by Marketing Dive and distributed via PR Newswire within 48 hours of the activation, indicating that the stunt generated genuine press interest rather than relying solely on paid placement. For a brand still in the relatively early stages of building U.S. consumer familiarity with panettone as a category, that earned attention carries strategic weight that outlasts any single campaign metric. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a concept that is both emotionally coherent and culturally well-timed, with execution that demonstrates creative confidence within a constrained production window.
Bauducco's Thanksgiving at Times Square was a live experiential activation in November 2018. Created by agency Samba Rock, it invited members of the public to record Thanksgiving messages for distant loved ones, which were then broadcast in real time on The Cube, a 4,000-square-foot digital billboard at Times Square in the United States.
The campaign was created by Miami-based agency Samba Rock. Creative Director Valter Klug led the concept alongside Art Director Piare Encina and Copywriter Dubraska Gonçalves. Lemonade TV handled video production, with Narmine Yamaguchi producing, according to credits documented by PR Newswire and Samba Rock.
Times Square provided Bauducco with both scale and audience diversity. The location draws millions of visitors annually, including many with personal familiarity with panettone. Staging the activation there connected the brand's holiday heritage to a distinctly American moment while generating press coverage reported by outlets including Marketing Dive.
The Cube is a roughly 4,000-square-foot full-motion digital display in Times Square operated through Outfront Media. Bauducco used it in November 2018 to broadcast real-time Thanksgiving messages recorded during a four-hour live event, as reported by Marketing Dive and confirmed in a public announcement by Outfront Media.
Bauducco positioned panettone as a symbol of family connection rather than an imported novelty. By anchoring the campaign to Thanksgiving — the United States' most family-centred holiday — Samba Rock extended the brand's seasonal relevance beyond Christmas, directly addressing the category education challenge Bauducco faced since entering the U.S. market around 2014.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
