The story behind “Mexico: Nos Toca”, an episode of the #TeamBehindTheGame series
22nd February 2026. T-5 days until we travel to Mexico to film Trophy Tour. Images of sudden cartel violence across the country flash on TV and across social media. Particularly impacted is Jalisco state, where we are meant to travel and shoot (no, film is a better word here). No US insurer will sell us production insurance.
What do we do?
We have no choice but to postpone until things calm down.
This causes a domino effect: we have a huge number of episodes and recap videos that increase in frequency as the World Cup approaches and kicks off. Delaying, therefore, is far from optimal.
We adjust: instead of the planned 2 city episodes in Mexico, we combine it into 1 pan-Mexican episode. These were supposed to be city episodes. Now, one episode is meant to somehow tell the story of an entire football-crazed country with an extraordinarily rich and layered culture.
So, how do you tell an authentic story about a country of a 130 million people - one so diverse in every way?
Our city episodes were designed around four core elements:
- Culture: Usually, a non-Coca-Cola protagonist would reveal something about the local culture that might not be obvious to an outsider, through personal lived experience or reflection
- Business BTS: What makes Coca-Cola operations here unique, interesting, or particularly challenging?
- People: Who are the individuals making it happen? What makes them tick?
- Place: What do football anticipation, fandom and celebration actually feel like here? How does it differ from an ordinary day or event? What might surprise the audience?
At this scale, it is easy to fall into the trap of templated questions and a one-size-fits all approach.
The art, however, lies in the choosing what is templated (the structure, and core components) and what is tailored to the specific culture or episode (the way you ask certain questions, how it connects).
Ask a generic "How do you feel now that X is happening?" and you'll probably get some variation of "Amazing!” It tells the audience almost nothing.
We tried to start somewhere else: Who is the human behind the job title? Who are they when they are not representing this company?
What are they passionate about? What worries them? Why does any of this matter to them? Who do they hope will be proud of their achievements?
For Mexico: Nos Toca, we interviewed five Coca-Cola and bottler executives, none of whom I'd met before. I conducted every interview in Spanish, hoping their native language would allow them to express exactly what they felt, as naturally as possible.
In Mexico City, I interviewed four of them consecutively over roughly two hours. The challenge was to establish rapport quickly, understand what made each person distinctive, and discover the stories only they could tell.
A remarkable generational story of tradition, responsibility and inheritance began to emerge.
Several of the people sitting across from me had grown up with Coca-Cola and remembered Mexico's previous World Cup as young people, often through memories with their fathers.
Now they were Coca-Cola leaders helping shape this iteration of the World Cup in Mexico themselves.
They had gone from experiencing these institutions as children to becoming some of the people shaping them for the next generation.
Our conversations revealed a treasure-trove of childhood memories, family traditions, ideas about Mexican identity, origin stories of Coke products/merch…and much more.
The same principle applied visually: I became slightly obsessed with the word “texture”.
Stadiums and fan festivals weren't enough, because they only tell you that a World Cup is happening in Mexico. They don't necessarily tell you what Mexico feels like while a World Cup is happening.
How do you transport somebody who's never been to Mexico there? How do you communicate its energy, tastes, sounds and atmosphere through a laptop or smartphone thousands of miles away?
So alongside our traditional production footage, we deliberately captured smartphone content from the streets: tacos being made at roadside stands, the Zócalo filling with people, flags hanging from cars, horns, chanting and celebrations continuing into the night.
I have taken many lessons from Mexico: Nos Toca - but one of the most important is this:
Authenticity is a product of context, not a production style.
You can shoot on a $100,000 cinema camera or a smartphone. You can make it polished or UGC-style, meticulously planned or spontaneous.
None of it is authentic if you haven't understood the people and place you're trying to represent.
That requires context, immersion and an open mind. This is even more important today.
AI is making it increasingly easy to generate scripts, concepts, images and content. Execution is becoming abundant, and often repetitive and algorithmic.
Context, curiosity, taste and judgment aren’t, and that is exactly where the story comes from.