Tecate - Golfo de México | Cosimo Salvati

TECATE - GOLFO DE MEXICO - HEAD BY COSIMO SALVATI

Client: Cerveza Tecate

Campaign: Golfo de México

Photography: Cosimo Salvati
Stills Production: Polikroma
Global Production: Landia
Advertising Agency: Le Pub Worldwide
Post-Production: Gabriel Islas

Photography Assistants:
José María Carrasco
Sergio Ortiz

TECATE LIGHT CON SAL DEL GOLFO DE MÉXICO

CONTEXT AND STARTING POINT

In 2025, Tecate launched a provocative and ironic campaign that centers on more than just a product: territorial pride. With a name loaded with intent — Gulf of Mexico — the campaign was born as a response to Donald Trump’s attempt to rename this vast body of water as the Gulf of America. Beyond the absurdity of the gesture, the campaign sparks a conversation about the symbolic sovereignty of territory.

The new Tecate Light with salt from the Gulf of Mexico is more than a product launch: it’s a form of cultural and emotional appropriation. The sea already has a name — and now it has a flavor. That saltiness — local, alive, and rich with history — became the core of the concept.

VISUAL LANGUAGE AND PROJECTUAL APPROACH

My approach was to build images that evoke presence without depicting it directly. Situations where certain visual cues — like a half-squeezed lime, an off-center bottle, or barely visible condensation on the glass — spark the viewer’s imagination and place them right there, in the middle of the scene.

POINT OF VIEW

The intention wasn’t to represent a frozen instant or a postcard, but rather a moment charged with visual truth — where everything feels like it’s genuinely happening, and the camera arrives just in time to frame it precisely. That’s the logic guiding the entire series: composition with a documentary spirit, yet carefully crafted through art direction and lighting.

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Each scene was designed to convey a story without characters — but with traces of them. As if the viewer arrived at the exact moment when the ice hasn’t yet melted. The spontaneity is staged and directed, but never forced.

This is my approach to still life photography.

COLORIMETRY

One of the central focuses of the project was also the exploration of a very specific color range of blues. We were looking for a blue with depth, with emotional weight. A blue that doesn’t evoke just any generic coast, but speaks directly of the Gulf of Mexico: its density, its salt, its horizon. A color that makes you feel like you’re floating in the middle of that sea, without needing to see it in full.

THE BLUE OF THE GULF

It’s not a Caribbean blue.
It’s the blue of the Gulf: deep, salty, dense.
The very blue that surrounds the new Tecate Light,
and defines its flavor, its origin, and its identity.