At the end of the day, Tecate is a beer and beer is a fun category.
[In 2010] the Tecate business in the U.S. was not necessarily performing that well.
We are competing in a category versus giants. We are relatively a small brand in this country, an emerging brand, so we needed to understand what we were challenging.
Bottom line is we needed to punch above our weight.
We had a better chance to be successful if we targeted the unacculturated Hispanic in the U.S. Spanish-dominant, predominantly, and living less than 10 years in this country.
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Photo by: MARC BRYAN-BROWN
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So we developed breakthrough stories in a way to engage consumers in a lighthearted [way], in a very positive way. …
Spanish speaking, a little bit over the top. Created a lot of conversation, believe me.
If we wanted to secure long-term growth, we needed to evolve our target consumer, and target a wider spectrum of Hispanics in the U.S. So we decided to migrate, to target the bicultural Hispanic in the U.S., which represents 65 percent of the Hispanic population in this country.
Our brand idea evolved to “Born Bold.” … This idea is a strong idea. Why? Very simple, because it is culturally relevant to this consumer, that has the particularity of being able to live between two worlds.
This consumer goes back and forth between his Mexican or Hispanic descendants, values of family, food, music and sports, all the way to his American way of living.
From having only Spanish-speaking communication, we evolved to having Spanish and English communication and media buys. So this year, for the first time ever, we launched on national English TV.
Soccer is big for our consumer. … even though it’s not so big today in the U.S., it’s growing, it’s emerging. The MLS is growing, but also the Mexican soccer league plays a very relevant role with our consumer.
We decided last year to start a partnership with Chivas Guadalajara in the U.S., a very laser-focused, targeted strategy. But we leveraged our partnership 360.
For the first time, we developed communication, specific soccer communication that is consistent for TV, outdoor, digital and, very important for us, we get all the way to the store level.
Boxing is basically what we breathe and what we do every day as a brand. We have been sponsoring boxing or present in boxing in the U.S. since 2007.
Last year we had the Fight of the Century [Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao]. And the Fight of the Century set a new standard in the way in which we want to start activating this platform going forward.
This is our mantra, either go big or go home. We need to be noticed. This is where we engage consumers the most.
Digital has been a platform where we have started to innovate, and we want to take the boxing experience closer to our consumers. We started developing exclusive content with celebrities. We leveraged the association with Larry Merchant and [Sylvester Stallone] for the first time in the U.S.
The use of celebrities in the sport allowed Tecate in Mexico to take the partnership to a new level, to a different level. Why? Because this type of communication started to recruit new audiences to the platform, from consumers that were not even interested in boxing before. Now they’re curious to watch a fight on TV or even attend one of the boxing events.
