Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show Helps a Santa Clara County Agency Go Viral

Days after Super Bowl LX, the buzz from Bad Bunny’s halftime show is still tearing across the internet, with a lot of the focus on behind-the-scenes clips shared by supporting performers dressed as bushy sugarcane plants.

The visuals of dozens of people marching on and off the field at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara donning head-to-toe grassy getups offer fans a glimpse of just how much effort goes into throwing a massive event like the Super Bowl, and how some critical supporting roles might often go unseen.

In the wave of flora fixation, a little-known government agency in Santa Clara County is capitalizing on the cultural moment and hoping to earn a bigger following with some social media savvy.

The Consumer and Environmental Protection Agency has garnered hundreds of thousands of views and thousands of likes on some recent posts tying its government work hunting for bad bugs to the halftime show and the big game. It’s quite a feat for an account started last fall that had fewer than 100 followers at the time of this writing.

“You never really know what’s going to take off and what people are going to be excited about,” said Ericka Mora, the county’s acting deputy agricultural commissioner. “But I’m really excited that hopefully this drives more people to start following the CEPA accounts that we have so that they can learn a lot more.”

The agency oversees a host of functions, including animal services, hazardous waste and mosquito control, among others. Its Division of Agriculture is responsible for ensuring local farms and plant life are kept safe from invasive pests, especially the glassy-winged sharpshooter.

The leafhopping bug is native to the southeastern U.S. and northeastern Mexico, but has established itself in Southern and Central California, as well. It can wreak havoc on grapevines by spreading a bacterium that causes Pierce’s disease, which the USDA said affects grape quality and production, and eventually kills the vines.

So when Super Bowl planners decided there needed to be about four semi-truckloads worth of hedges, trees and other live plant decor shipped into Santa Clara to spruce up the surroundings of Levi’s Stadium, staff from CEPA’s Division of Agriculture were called in for inspections.

“Definitely the scale of this event was larger than something that we normally deal with, but we were able to pool our resources together and finish the inspection over the course of about two afternoons,” said Carly Miranda Lopez, an associate biologist with the Division of Agriculture.

The small teams of inspectors worked to comb through the branches and leaves, checking their undersides for any trace of the sharpshooter or its egg casings. Thankfully, only one “egg scar” was found, which Lopez said indicates the bug was neutralized by a parasite long before it got to Santa Clara.

“I definitely thought it was cool and a little weird. I never thought stepping into this job that I would be part of an inspection for the Super Bowl at Levi’s Stadium,” said Lopez, who is a 49ers fan and was saddened her team didn’t make the championship. “I’m very glad that I was able to be a part of it with my colleagues who share that sort of pride around the event, representing our county.”

Following Lopez and other inspectors was Carolyn Lê, the senior communications officer for CEPA, who did some “content farming,” filming the staff as they went about their work.

Lê collaborated with her staff to post some cheeky and well-timed videos featuring the inspectors, and also clips of the halftime show itself, calling attention to all the plant life portrayed.

“POV: You tune into the halftime show, but you’re an agricultural inspector, so all you can think about are the plants,” some of the text over one video read, earning nearly 8,000 likes as of Tuesday.

“We’re approaching this in a way where it’s like, ‘Hey, we work for the government. This is the type of work that we do, and sometimes people don’t find it very fascinating, but we really love it,’” Lê said.

“We were pretty shocked” at the level of engagement the posts received, she said, even though the team knew there’d be a lot of eyes on videos related to Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl.

Another successful post was rooted in a brief moment of panic Lê had when she saw the sugarcane grasses on screen and worried her team had missed some plants in their inspection, only to realize through other social posts that they were people.

“We’re just pretty grateful for the social media platform to allow us to connect with other people and then draw them into understanding why inspecting plants is so important,” she added.

The account also got a huge response from a video featuring the county’s animal services staff and a series of shots of bunnies at the county’s animal shelter, with a caption that said, “Looking for a bad bunny.”

“I was very surprised when I came to work on Monday morning and saw over the weekend, the posts had had thousands of views, hundreds of likes and was continuing to grow,” Lopez said.

“Most of our work is done behind the scenes, so kind of bringing it to the forefront of Instagram’s algorithm can be a great way to show the community what kind of services they have through us.”