March, 2026.- Producing a campaign for the biggest event on the planet is not just a logistical challenge; it is an exercise in diplomacy, precision, and long-term vision. In this 2026 FIFA World Cup year, Debi Rubbiani stands as an authoritative voice on the monumental scale demanded by brands like Coca-Cola. With a career spanning Latin America, Europe, and the United States, Debi has perfected the art of creating “content ecosystems”: production structures that allow a hero idea to fragment into thousands of pieces adaptable to every market, culture, and regulation. From purpose-driven beauty campaigns for Dove to fantasy and horror worlds for Supercell, her approach is built on three non-negotiable pillars: obsessive organization, early legal integration, and a strategic flexibility that anticipates change before it happens.
In this exclusive interview with Roastbrief, Debi Rubbiani shares lessons learned in the trenches of the world’s highest-budget productions. She explains why the success of a global campaign is often decided two years before launch and how the modern producer’s role has evolved into “cultural orchestration,” protecting the integrity of the creative idea while enabling its local relevance. Furthermore, she offers essential advice for the next generation of producers aspiring to the international stage, emphasizing that English proficiency and insatiable curiosity are the keys that open the doors to global markets. Discover how this leader is redefining the standard for transnational production, proving that in 2026 advertising, true scale is achieved when operational efficiency empowers—rather than limits—human authenticity.
1. The FIFA World Cup Moment: 2026 is a massive year for global brand campaigns with the FIFA World Cup. You’ve worked on multiple Coca-Cola x FIFA campaigns, including this year’s. What makes producing a World Cup campaign fundamentally different from other global brand moments? Where do you start when the stakes and scale are this enormous?
Producing a World Cup campaign is fundamentally different because it operates on an entirely different scale. It’s not just a campaign, it becomes a global ecosystem of content that needs to work across multiple markets, cultures, and platforms simultaneously. In many cases, these projects begin their production journey up to two years before the tournament itself, simply because of the scale of coordination required.
Unlike most brand moments that focus on a specific region or audience, the World Cup requires a delicate balance between global consistency and local relevance. From a production standpoint, it also involves coordinating an unusually complex network of stakeholders. There are often multiple layers of approvals across global and regional brand teams, agencies, rights holders, and partner brands, all while managing collaborations with celebrities and elite athletes whose schedules and commitments add another level of complexity.
At the same time, the volume of deliverables expands significantly, ranging from hero films to social content, activations, and localized adaptations across markets.
When approaching a project of this magnitude, I usually start by mapping the full ecosystem of the campaign, how many markets are involved, what partnerships are in place, what the deliverables look like, and how the story will live across platforms. Once that architecture is clear, it becomes possible to design a production structure that allows the campaign to scale globally while still feeling culturally authentic in each market.
2. Lessons from the Trenches: Not every producer has experience working at this global scale with clients like Coca-Cola. Looking back at campaigns like “Stock Up” (2018), the Coke Studio projects (2024-2025), and this year’s FIFA work, what are the top three lessons you’ve learned about producing successful global campaigns that you wish someone had told you earlier in your career?
1. Being extremely organized: One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is the value of being extremely organized and maintaining as much visibility over the campaign as possible. Because global productions operate at a very different scale, they often involve not only work for multiple markets, but also multiple agencies, partners, and an enormous number of deliverables across platforms.
Having a clear structure from the beginning, including timelines, workflows, responsibilities, and communication channels, being extremely organized becomes essential to keep everything moving in the same direction. The more complex the campaign, the more important it is to create systems that allow the entire team to stay aligned and informed throughout the process.
Ultimately, the more visibility you have early on, the better prepared you are to anticipate challenges and navigate the complexities that inevitably come with global productions.
2. Involving Legal and Business Affairs early: Another key lesson is the importance of involving Legal and Business Affairs teams as early as possible in the process. As mentioned, global campaigns often include multiple partnerships, talent agreements, usage rights, and collaborations with celebrities or elite athletes, all of which come with very specific contractual and rights considerations.
On projects of this scale, Legal and Business Affairs are essential partners throughout the process. Their guidance helps the production team navigate complex rights structures and avoid issues that could otherwise slow down or compromise the campaign. So having the right legal guidance early on helps ensure that everything, from talent agreements to image rights, music usage, and brand partnerships, is properly reviewed and cleared before production moves forward.
3. Designing for adaptability from the start: A third lesson I’ve learned is the importance of designing campaigns with adaptability in mind from the very beginning. In global productions, the same brand can have different product names, packaging, regulations, or messaging depending on the country or region.
Because of this, the content we produce needs to be flexible enough to work across multiple markets. What clients value most is material that can be easily and efficiently adapted for different territories without requiring entirely new productions.
Thinking about these variables early, from how products are shown on screen to how assets are framed and structured, allows the campaign to scale much more effectively across markets.
Looking back, I wish someone had told me earlier in my career how important it is to plan for that adaptability from day one. When production anticipates those needs, it becomes a huge added value for global brands.
3. The Dove “r/eal reviews” Launch: Dove’s “r/eal reviews” just launched—another global campaign. Walk us through the producer’s role in bringing a campaign like this to life across multiple markets. How do you balance consistency of the core idea with the need for local cultural relevance and executional nuance?
Producing a global campaign like Dove’s r/eal reviews means operating at the intersection of creativity, logistics, and cultural understanding. The producer’s role is essentially to build the structure that allows the core idea to travel across markets while still feeling authentic and relevant locally.
One important element in campaigns like this is casting. For a brand like Dove, authenticity is not optional, it’s foundational. That means ensuring the talent truly reflects the diversity of the communities the brand speaks to. Inclusive and representative casting becomes a strategic decision, not just a creative one, especially when the campaign will be seen across multiple regions.
Balancing global consistency with local nuance is one of the biggest challenges. The core idea needs to remain intact, but execution often needs to adapt to cultural contexts, talent, language, and sometimes even regulations that vary from region to region. Working closely with local partners helps ensure that what feels authentic in one market resonates just as strongly in another.
In that sense, the producer’s role becomes one of orchestration, protecting the integrity of the global idea while enabling each market to make it culturally meaningful.
4. Horror, Humor, and Global Appeal: The Clash Royale “Lose If You Dare – The Royale Curse” campaign (2024) tapped into horror tropes for a global gaming audience. How do you, as a producer, help navigate creative concepts that need to resonate across cultures? What’s your framework for assessing whether an idea will translate or fall flat internationally?
Working across different brands and categories is one of the great privileges of being a producer. It allows you to step into entirely new worlds. For example, I’m not personally a gamer, but that doesn’t prevent me from fully immersing myself in the client’s universe by understanding the product, the culture around the game, the community, and the way the brand interacts with its fans. In the case of Supercell’s Clash Royale, that universe is incredibly rich and global.
Learning about the product and the brand is essential. It means understanding who the audience is, what age groups the game resonates with, and which regions of the world are most important for the campaign. That information helps guide key production decisions, from where we shoot to where we can find the right talent to represent that audience authentically.
Even when a global campaign is filmed in English, there are always considerations around localization. In many markets, the content may need to be dubbed or adapted into other languages. For this particular client, however, it was very helpful to align early on a concept that was universal enough, both creatively and legally, to resonate with the majority of their global audience.
This particular film was also unique from many different perspectives. The brief itself was very clear: Let’s make a horror film. From that starting point, the process focused on bringing together the right collaborators. We looked for a director with deep experience in the horror genre, and it was equally important to partner with a great VFX company to help build the atmosphere and visual world of the story.
It became a true collaborative effort between the creative team, production, the director, and the VFX partners, and that sense of teamwork is ultimately what translates into the final result on screen.
5. The Global Producer’s Toolkit: Producing at this scale requires a specific operational toolkit—from managing multiple production partners to navigating time zones, languages, and logistics. What are the non-negotiables in your production process when you’re tackling a campaign that needs to launch simultaneously around the world?
Producing campaigns that need to launch simultaneously across multiple markets requires a very structured operational approach. After nearly two decades working as a producer on international campaigns, I’ve come to rely on what I like to call the three pillars of global production.
Pillar 1: Strong production partners
Having the right production partners is fundamental. Global campaigns depend heavily on trusted production companies and local teams who understand the realities of each market — from logistics and regulations to talent and locations. Strong partnerships and open communication create the foundation that allows complex productions to move forward efficiently while still delivering on the creative vision.
Pillar 2: Rigorous organization and visibility
Organization is absolutely critical when working at this scale. Global productions involve many moving parts, so maintaining clear visibility across timelines, approvals, and deliverables is essential. Over the years, I’ve learned that carefully tracking every update and keeping teams aligned across different markets helps prevent small issues from turning into larger challenges later in the process.
Pillar 3: Flexibility and contingency planning
Even with the most detailed preparation, global productions inevitably involve change. Schedules shift, creative evolves, and unexpected logistical challenges arise. Being able to adapt quickly while protecting the integrity of the project is key. Anticipating potential risks early and always having contingency plans in place allows the team to respond effectively when adjustments are needed.
Ultimately, producing at a global level is about creating a system where creativity, collaboration, and adaptability can work together to bring a campaign to life across different cultures and markets.
6. Advice for Aspiring Global Producers: For producers who aspire to work at this level but haven’t yet had the opportunity, what advice would you give? What skills, experiences, or mindsets should they be developing now to prepare for producing big, successful campaigns with global reach?
1. Speak the language of the industry
For anyone who wants to work on global campaigns, speaking English is essential. It has become the universal working language of our industry. Over the years, I’ve seen incredibly talented professionals who had the creative and production skills to participate in global projects, but language became a barrier for them.
This is not only something I’ve experienced coming from Latin America; it applies to professionals and agencies from any non-English-speaking country. In today’s industry, global campaigns can be led by creative agencies from anywhere in the world, and English often becomes the common language that allows all those teams to collaborate.
Being able to communicate clearly in English opens the door to participate in those conversations and to work with international teams. It’s not about losing your cultural perspective’; instead, it’s about having the right tools to bring that perspective into global projects.
2. Stay curious and open to new challenges
Global production can feel intimidating at first, especially if you’ve never worked on a project of that scale. My advice is to stay curious and to not be afraid to ask questions. Learn from colleagues who have experience with international productions, ask how processes work, and observe how global teams collaborate.
There’s no such thing as the wrong question. It’s always better to ask and learn than to pretend you already know everything. Once you work on your first global campaign, it changes the way you see production, and from there, you continue learning with every project.
3. Build a strong team environment
Global productions involve constant collaboration with people from different cultures, disciplines, and time zones. Creating a positive team environment can make a huge difference throughout the process.
As a producer, you spend a lot of time communicating, coordinating, and aligning teams. When you foster a collaborative atmosphere and clear workflows, it helps everyone work more efficiently and keeps the project moving forward, even during challenging moments.
Looking back on my own journey, one thing I’ve learned is that every project, no matter the scale, teaches you something valuable. The experience you build along the way is what ultimately prepares you for larger opportunities.
7. Lastly, about your journey: You’ve built a global career across multiple markets and are now based in the U.S. Can you tell us about your path and how that has shaped your perspective as a producer?
My career has always been shaped by working across different markets and cultures. I started in Latin America and gradually moved into more global roles, collaborating with international teams and brands operating across multiple regions.
Over time, that exposure naturally led me to work more closely with the U.S. market, and eventually to relocate to Miami, which today feels like a natural hub between North and Latin America.
Having worked across different regions has strongly influenced the way I approach production. It has given me a deep sensitivity to cultural nuance, as well as the ability to build production systems that allow ideas to scale globally without losing their authenticity at a local level.
