SOCIAL has brought the colour, rhythm and delicious chaos of Mexico to every neighbourhood with Mela Mexicana, a month-long festival across all SOCIAL outlets in India including Hyderabad till 10th August. Built in association with the Embassy of Mexico in India, Mela Mexicana is a full cultural takeover of SOCIAL. For one whole month, outlets across the country will come alive with Mexican-inspired food and drinks, bold décor, immersive visual storytelling with elements inspired by alebrijes, lucha libre, community-led formats, live performances, salsa evenings, and interactive game nights.
The festival brings together the warmth of a cantina, the drama of a telenovela, the colour of Mexican street culture and the familiar SOCIAL energy that guests know and love. Across outlets, Mela Mexicana will come alive through papel picado, bold Mexican-inspired visuals, staff in sombreros, and resident DJs in lucha libre masks, setting the mood for a month of colour, music and celebration.
Every night at 8:30 PM, all SOCIAL outlets are also hosting a short Mela Mexicana ritual. For 5 to 10 minutes, staff in sombreros will move through the outlet with maracas and pompoms, pouring complimentary celebratory shots for guests and bringing everyone together for a lively shared moment.
Why Mela Mexicana, Why Now
At SOCIAL, culture has always been served with food and drinks. From the way people gather, eat, celebrate, play, and discover new things together, SOCIAL has built its world around shared experiences. Mela Mexicana continues that thought by turning July into a reason to step out, try something new and be part of something larger than a meal.
Mexico and India share a natural cultural shorthand: colour, spice, street food, music, family-style eating, big emotions and bigger celebrations. Mela Mexicana taps into this shared energy and gives it a SOCIAL spin. It is rooted in Mexican inspiration, but designed for the way India eats, drinks and hangs out today.
MediaNews4U.com caught up with Divya Aggarwal, Chief Growth Officer, Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality Pvt. Ltd.
Q. What made SOCIAL decide to turn Mela Mexicana into a full-month experience across every outlet instead of just a weekend food pop-up?
With Mela Mexicana, we saw an opportunity to introduce an experience like never before. Mexican culture gave us a very rich world to work with, from food and drinks to music, colour, street energy, games, dance, drama and community.
That is why we built it as a month-long, pan-India experience. Across July, guests can discover Mela Mexicana through the special menu, tequila-led cocktails, salsa-led evenings, Lotería-inspired programming, workshops, community nights and the nightly 8:30 PM ritual across outlets. We also brought in Abakorao for live Latin music, which helped bring the energy of the festival alive on-ground.
A weekend pop-up would have introduced the menu. A full-month format gives people many reasons to return, or discover the campaign at different points in the month. That is very SOCIAL. The idea is not only to announce a campaign, but to create something people can actually live through the outlet experience.
Q. How is the Embassy partnership making the Mexican experience feel more real?
The Embassy partnership adds an important layer of authenticity and cultural context. When a brand builds an experience inspired by another culture, it has to go beyond visual codes and popular dishes. The approach has to be thoughtful, respectful and rooted in a real understanding of what that culture represents.
For us, the association with the Embassy of Mexico in India helped strengthen the cultural foundation of Mela Mexicana while still allowing it to remain joyful, accessible and SOCIAL in its expression. It gave the festival more credibility because the Mexican inspiration was not being treated as just a theme, but as a culture we were engaging with more consciously.
That depth also came through in the menu. Chef Ashish Sharma Diaz Del Castillo, who has co-curated the menu with Chef Shamsul, brings his own Indian-Mexican background to the process. That helped us approach the food with more nuance, while still keeping it approachable for Indian diners.
Q. Beyond the food and cocktails, which part of Mela Mexicana has surprised you the most in terms of how people are showing up and engaging?
What has stood out is how actively people are engaging with the community-led parts of the festival. Guests are not just walking in, ordering from the menu and leaving. They are showing up for the programming, participating in the games, staying for the music and making the experience part of their evening.
The 8:30 PM ritual has also become a strong shared moment inside the outlet. It changes the energy of the room very quickly. People look up, participate, record it, cheer and become part of the festival almost instantly.
That is the kind of engagement we value because it shows that people are not only consuming the campaign. They are taking part in it.
Q. How does a global festival like this fit into SOCIAL’s hyperlocal identity?
SOCIAL’s hyperlocal identity comes from the way each outlet belongs to its neighbourhood. Every outlet has its own regulars, its own communities and its own rhythm.
Mela Mexicana brings a global cultural inspiration into those neighbourhood spaces, but the experience is still shaped by how people in that city show up. A community night in Delhi may have a different energy from one in Bangalore or Kolkata, and that is exactly what makes it interesting.
For us, the balance is important. The core festival stays consistent across outlets, but the way it is experienced can feel local. That is how a pan-India campaign can still feel rooted in the neighbourhood.
Q. What early signs are you seeing that tell you young Indian consumers want more than just dining, they want cultural experiences they can post and talk about?
We are seeing this very clearly in how young consumers choose where to go. A meal is no longer just a meal. It is a plan, a story, a reel, a memory and a reason to gather.
Our own reading of young India through SOCIAL’s Voices From The Hood report also points to this. Experiences are becoming a form of social currency. Young consumers want places that give them something to participate in, share and talk about.
With Mela Mexicana, we are seeing that behaviour on-ground. People are not only ordering from the menu. They are filming the ritual, sharing the décor, coming for programming nights and turning the experience into their own content.
Q. Is Mela Mexicana driving new footfalls or just deeper engagement from regulars?
It is doing both, and that is what makes the campaign interesting.
For regular guests, Mela Mexicana gives them a fresh reason to rediscover SOCIAL. They are seeing the outlet in a new mood, trying a limited-period menu, engaging with the ritual and coming in for programming.
At the same time, the festival also creates new entry points for people who may not have planned a regular SOCIAL visit. A creator reel, a city page listing, a salsa night, a live music evening or a friend’s story can all become triggers for first-time or occasional guests to walk in.
So it is not just footfall in the narrow sense. It is renewed relevance.
Q. Why did SOCIAL choose July to run a Latin festival, and does timing play a big role in how these cultural properties perform?
Timing matters a lot. July is an interesting month because people are looking for fresh reasons to step out. It is also a good moment to create energy inside outlets through food, drinks, music and programming.
For a cultural property like Mela Mexicana, the month-long format helps because it gives people multiple chances to experience it. Not everyone discovers a campaign on day one. Some people hear about it through media, some through creators, some through friends, and some simply walk into the outlet and experience it unexpectedly.
So July gave us the space to build discovery, participation and FOMO across the month.
Q. With creators and community-led nights as part of the plan, how are you measuring success beyond sales and social media posts?
Sales and social media are important, but they are not the only markers. For a campaign like this, we also look at participation.
Are people showing up for programming? Are they staying longer? Are they coming in groups? Are they sharing the experience organically? Are creators interpreting the campaign in different ways? Are city communities picking it up as a plan, not just a promotion?
We also look at repeat visits, menu uptake, event attendance, earned media and the quality of conversation around the campaign. Success is when the campaign creates both business impact and brand memory.
Q. What’s been the biggest challenge running the same festival in every city?
The biggest challenge is consistency without making it feel mechanical. When you run a festival pan-India, the core idea has to remain the same, but each outlet and city has its own rhythm.
So the challenge is making sure that the menu, drinks, décor, rituals and key campaign cues are consistent, while the programming still feels local and relevant. A salsa night may work differently in Delhi, Bangalore or Kolkata. A digital community page may interpret the festival differently in Pune or Hyderabad.
That is also the exciting part. SOCIAL’s strength is that it can take one national idea and let it come alive through neighbourhood energy.
Q. The company has focused on decoding the behavioural economy of young India. What did that research tell you about bringing Mexico to SOCIAL right now?
The larger insight was that young India is not only spending on products or meals. They are spending on moments that give them identity, community and social currency.
Through Voices From The Hood and our everyday experience inside SOCIAL, we are seeing that young consumers want spaces that allow them to discover, participate and express themselves. They want experiences that are layered enough to become stories.
That is why Mexico felt right. Mexican culture has all the ingredients of a high-energy social experience: food, colour, music, street culture, dance, play, drama and celebration. It gave us a cultural world that young India could step into very naturally.
Q. When you look at Mela Mexicana, do you see it more as a marketing initiative or as a long-term product for SOCIAL?
I see it as a brand experience first. It has marketing value, of course, but it is not just a campaign sitting outside the outlet. It is built into the food, drinks, décor, programming, rituals and the way guests experience SOCIAL through July.
Whether it becomes a recurring product or not depends on how guests respond and what we learn from it. But as a format, it definitely tells us something important: limited-period cultural experiences can become very strong brand properties when they are built with depth.
So I would not call it only marketing. It is a way of keeping the brand culturally alive.
Q. How did SOCIAL advertise Mela Mexicana in a way that made it feel like an experience invite rather than just another brand campaign?
The communication was built around invitation, not announcement. We did not want to simply say, “new menu launched.” The idea was to say, “come step into this world for a month.”
So the campaign language, creator briefs, digital community outreach, PR, listings and in-outlet storytelling all focused on the experience. Tacos and cocktails were important, but so were the rituals, the décor, the music, the games and the programming.
The visual world also helped. Mela Mexicana is colourful, high-energy and instantly content-friendly. That made the campaign feel less like an ad and more like a plan people wanted to be part of.
Q. In a month-long cultural festival like this, what role does word of mouth play in driving people to walk in compared to paid ads and social posts?
Word of mouth is extremely important for a campaign like this because the experience is very sensory. You can advertise the menu, but the real push often comes when someone says, “I went, and you should go.”
Paid ads, social posts, PR and creator content build awareness. But word of mouth builds trust and urgency. When people see their friends posting the ritual, the décor, the food, the band, the salsa night or the table energy, it feels more real.
For SOCIAL, the strongest campaigns are the ones that travel through people. That is when a campaign stops being only brand-led and becomes community-led.
Q. What are you doing during Mela Mexicana to make sure guests leave and actually talk about it with friends so that the buzz lasts beyond July?
We have built the campaign with memory points across the experience. The idea is that guests should leave with more than just “the food was good.”
There is the limited-period menu, the tequila-led cocktails, the décor, the 8:30 PM ritual, community nights, salsa evenings, Lotería-inspired games, telenovela-style formats and live music. Each of these creates a moment people can remember, record or talk about.
That is what helps the buzz last. When guests leave with a story, they carry the campaign forward. For us, that is the real goal: not just to create visibility during July, but to create a memory of July at SOCIAL.
