How Jumbo found a legitimate cultural territory for its digital presence (Angola, 2022–2025)

The challenge

Jumbo is a stock-cube brand created by Spain’s GBfoods. Over more than four decades, it has evolved from an imported product into part of everyday food culture across dozens of African countries. In Angola, where it is distributed by Angoalissar, the brand leads the market with Jumbo Vita, a multipurpose seasoning found in kitchens from north to south.

Despite this retail strength, the brand had not yet developed a distinctive narrative territory online. Communication existed, but there was no clear symbolic axis supporting a consistent editorial presence on social media. There was also a practical challenge: promoting other flavours in the range (Chicken, Prawn, Fish & Onion) without relying exclusively on Jumbo Vita’s historical weight.

The brief was straightforward: find a cultural foundation for Jumbo’s digital presence in Angola—something bigger than the product, yet neither imported, artificial nor opportunistic.

The strategy

To structure this presence, we started with a format already proving effective for other brands in the portfolio: a creative competition as a driver of engagement, participation and storytelling.

What was missing was the theme. And it was right in front of us.

In Angola, as across much of Africa, women play a central role in social, economic and family life. According to the brief itself, women also make most purchasing decisions for stock cubes and seasonings. In addition, 8 March is a public holiday with strong symbolic meaning in the country. Treating it as a mere “commercial date” made no sense. Claiming this space as the brand’s cultural territory did.

This is how Jumbo Women’s Month was born: an annual campaign honouring women, structured as a creative competition rather than a popularity contest. The premise was simple and open: anyone could participate with a video, photo or text, provided it paid tribute to a woman and, from 2024 onwards, also included a Jumbo product as part of the story.

The brand did not try to “speak for women”. It created a stage for other people to speak about them.

The execution

From its first edition, the competition was designed to be inclusive in both format and access. It accepted video, image or text, reducing technical barriers and broadening the participant profile. To prevent a single format from dominating the results, prizes were divided into categories (video, photo and text).

The prizes followed a very practical logic for the Angolan context: home appliances and electronics to “furnish the kubico”. The prize showcase, inspired by the popular imagery of major television game shows, consistently proved to be the main driver of attention and participation peaks.

Visually, the campaign also required a pragmatic solution. With no budget to commission artists and no suitable equivalents in stock libraries, we opted for AI-generated illustrations, renewed for each edition. The process began with Midjourney, moved through other tools and now includes workflows using Freepik and Adobe, continuously updated with the latest capabilities and always serving the same goal: keeping the campaign visually fresh without losing coherence.

Throughout the participation period, social channels also published supporting content with tips on how and why to honour women, reinforcing the competition’s cultural character rather than just its promotional side.

From 2024 onwards, we introduced an additional requirement: each tribute had to include at least one Jumbo product (or a mention of it in written entries). This brought the brand’s emotional narrative closer to the product without undermining the campaign’s spirit, which remained, above all, a celebration.

The result

Reports from 2022 to 2025 show a consistent pattern: Women’s Month became one of the strongest moments in Jumbo’s digital calendar in Angola.

Across four editions, Jumbo Women’s Month evolved from a one-off activation into an annual brand ritual. In 2023, the campaign reached more than 1.3 million people and generated over 160,000 interactions, with a substantial rise in engagement compared with the previous year. In 2024, despite adjustments to the mechanics, the format maintained momentum, reaching more than 1 million people and exceeding 300,000 interactions. By 2025, the project was firmly established, with impact growing by around 52% and 160 valid competition entries.

More important than the figures in isolation was the kind of response generated: hundreds of spontaneous, personally authored tributes linking Jumbo to real stories, real people and real affection. In the Angolan context, the prizes had a tangible impact on the winners’ lives, reinforcing the perception that the campaign was not merely symbolic but also materially relevant.

Across four editions, Jumbo moved beyond simply “showing up” on Women’s Day and began consistently owning Women’s Month as a legitimate brand territory.

What I learned

• Competition campaigns work, but they only endure when backed by a genuine cultural territory.

• The right prizes, in the right context, remain one of the strongest drivers of participation in markets such as Angola.

• Opening participation to different formats (video, photo and text) is crucial to democratising entry and broadening the participant profile.

• AI can be a practical visual production tool, provided it serves a clear idea rather than a trend.

• And perhaps most importantly: when a brand stops talking about itself and starts talking about people, the audience responds with stories, not just clicks.

How I explain this case at a bar

I usually explain it this way: everyone knows these ready-made stock cubes are not exactly health food, and in many parts of Africa there is still a belief that they are harmful in all sorts of ways. But Angolan women work outside the home, work inside it, care for their families and reach the end of the day exhausted. What they want is to put food on the table without spending even more hours in the kitchen.

Jumbo understood this and, instead of pretending the product was something else, chose a more honest path: putting these women at the centre of the conversation and treating them as they deserve. Not as a “target”, but as a pillar of real life.