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Plugged In: John Alvarado, Corona Extra

The commercial for Corona opens with fans watching fights, fists clenched, bobbing and weaving among friends. It then cuts to scenes of Premier Boxing Champions stars Deontay Wilder, Danny Garcia and Leo Santa Cruz doing the same, cheering from ringside. As vice president of marketing for Corona Extra, John Alvarado knows the sway boxing holds with Hispanic consumers. Early in the second year of the brand’s three-year deal with PBC, he sees potential for an even broader connection.


For the first time in Corona’s history, we developed a TV spot promoting a sponsorship that we have. Knowing that we have a full year of activating in front of us and a multiyear [deal] in front of us, we said, ‘Let’s go all-in in elevating the consumer’s experience.’ And the spot really is about celebrating the consumer’s experience — and of course promoting our partnership with PBC.


Photo by: CONSTELLATION BRANDS

On corralling a sport with no season: With PBC, we’ve been able to lay out a plan for the year because we know we’re going to have more than 40 fights in any particular calendar year of our agreement. So, actually, it has allowed us the opportunity to sit down and develop a cadence and a pool of assets that allows us to activate quickly and really blow it out across all the consumer touch points, from (point of sale) to digital to social to radio and TV.

On boxing’s return to broadly distributed networks: Having the sport be more readily available and accessible via the major networks and cable players was very important to us. It allows us the opportunity to continue to build a brand consumers love. That’s a core tenet of the way we operate as an organization. The ability to have the fights — and championship-level fights — readily available on television gives us the opportunity to put our world-class advertising around the fights and really engage consumers and help to build more momentum in that regard. That was certainly a factor in partnering with PBC. We saw it as a new and very attractive opportunity to further elevate Corona’s position in the sport.

On the audience: We’re seeing that the sport is doing really well among (male), 21-34, multicultural consumers. Hispanics, of course, but also African-Americans. You’re seeing fighters like Deontay Wilder, Danny Jacobs; that’s what we love about the PBC partnership. They’re putting out really high-quality fights involving multicultural boxers, and that’s engaging more consumers beyond just one particular demo. So we are seeing the sport continue to have a presence among the older generation but also seeing it attract millennials, which is also a focus of Corona.

— Bill King

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