It's hard to argue with success, even when the success amounts to the rarest of rare events, catching lighting in a bottle.
On the strength of its "most interesting man" advertising, Heineken's Dos Equis brand has enjoyed roughly 35% growth over the past ten years. As we noted nearly three years ago, the most interesting man achieved that success based on a brilliant strategic decision: Archly associating Dos Equis with the supposedly passé notion of traditional masculinity. Among the brand's over-the-top series of brash, clever, humorous ads, here's one of our favorites...
On the strength of its "most interesting man" advertising, Heineken's Dos Equis brand has enjoyed roughly 35% growth over the past ten years. As we noted nearly three years ago, the most interesting man achieved that success based on a brilliant strategic decision: Archly associating Dos Equis with the supposedly passé notion of traditional masculinity. Among the brand's over-the-top series of brash, clever, humorous ads, here's one of our favorites...
Back in the day, masculinity was a very common theme in many successful beer ads. But with the arrival of the age of political correctness, it fell out of favor. Celebrating guys-doing-sterotypical-guy-things risked offending lots of easily upset folks, both male and female. Indeed, the once widely accepted notion of "real men" lost its John Wayne underpinnings.
Just imagine a beer running ads like these today...
Just imagine a beer running ads like these today...
A moment of genius
Appreciating that times may change but powerful selling strategies can be timeless, Dos Equis zigged with a strategy anchored in traditional masculinity, just as most brands zagged the other way. Eschewing new-age conventions such as equal roles for guys and girls, gender-neutral outdoor activities, and testosterone-challenged male actors, Dos Equis put a spotlight on the opposite: An über-masculine world-roaming adventurer, a magnet for always-adoring women with whom he appeared successful by each ad's end. Yet, owing to the over-the-top premise and the superbly crafted copy, no howls of offense taken erupted in response. And as we noted earlier, the brand just grew and grew.
Now Dos Equis is about to make a critical change in its ads...
Appreciating that times may change but powerful selling strategies can be timeless, Dos Equis zigged with a strategy anchored in traditional masculinity, just as most brands zagged the other way. Eschewing new-age conventions such as equal roles for guys and girls, gender-neutral outdoor activities, and testosterone-challenged male actors, Dos Equis put a spotlight on the opposite: An über-masculine world-roaming adventurer, a magnet for always-adoring women with whom he appeared successful by each ad's end. Yet, owing to the over-the-top premise and the superbly crafted copy, no howls of offense taken erupted in response. And as we noted earlier, the brand just grew and grew.
Now Dos Equis is about to make a critical change in its ads...
The new, just-debuted Dos Equis ads look in many ways like the old ones, but the change is there, too. "We're trying to reach a new audience," explained the brand's marketing honcho.
This new advertising is no "sure thing."
Even with the same humor and the same writers, could something important be inadvertently lost in the move? Can you change one key element and not change the whole picture? Perhaps beer drinkers will long for the first most interesting man, not the second. Most of all, will the new guy be as good at selling beer as the original? No one--marketing honchos included--can be certain.
A key ingredient missing
In much the same way as other broad, beer-category benefits like "popularity" or "refreshment" or "great partying," pushing "masculinity" aims to associate brand-choice with a psycho-emotional consequence. The best odds of making this sale lie in incorporating a logical but provocative brand fact within a clever, powerful, over-arching creative construct. Without a supporting fact-based component, however, the relatively rare success of such efforts relies exclusively on the many artistic elements--the magic, if you will--of the ad coming together just so. Up until this point, Dos Equis' unexpected approach did just that. But because there really is a touch of magic in ads like this, changing a key element in the artistic construct is risky. There is no fact-built foundation about the beer to fall back on.
Dos Equis might have dramatically reduced that risk. Unlike the latest Heineken ads, the company's sibling Mexican brand never gave folks any interesting statement about the beer itself. Nothing about how it tastes, what's in the recipe, where it's made, who created the beer in the first place. Including any of these bits could have resulted in the most interesting man in the world pushing an especially interesting beer. Selling the beer's distinctiveness makes changing its spokesman a bit less critical, a bit less risky. Absent the interesting spokesman, there'd still have been an interesting beer.
The Dos Equis website certainly offers legitimate facts from which to choose, including the provocative "lager especial" nomenclature...
Even with the same humor and the same writers, could something important be inadvertently lost in the move? Can you change one key element and not change the whole picture? Perhaps beer drinkers will long for the first most interesting man, not the second. Most of all, will the new guy be as good at selling beer as the original? No one--marketing honchos included--can be certain.
A key ingredient missing
In much the same way as other broad, beer-category benefits like "popularity" or "refreshment" or "great partying," pushing "masculinity" aims to associate brand-choice with a psycho-emotional consequence. The best odds of making this sale lie in incorporating a logical but provocative brand fact within a clever, powerful, over-arching creative construct. Without a supporting fact-based component, however, the relatively rare success of such efforts relies exclusively on the many artistic elements--the magic, if you will--of the ad coming together just so. Up until this point, Dos Equis' unexpected approach did just that. But because there really is a touch of magic in ads like this, changing a key element in the artistic construct is risky. There is no fact-built foundation about the beer to fall back on.
Dos Equis might have dramatically reduced that risk. Unlike the latest Heineken ads, the company's sibling Mexican brand never gave folks any interesting statement about the beer itself. Nothing about how it tastes, what's in the recipe, where it's made, who created the beer in the first place. Including any of these bits could have resulted in the most interesting man in the world pushing an especially interesting beer. Selling the beer's distinctiveness makes changing its spokesman a bit less critical, a bit less risky. Absent the interesting spokesman, there'd still have been an interesting beer.
The Dos Equis website certainly offers legitimate facts from which to choose, including the provocative "lager especial" nomenclature...
Especial... how? Some Dos Equis product facts
We wish Dos Equis well with their replacement salesman. They're gonna need another fortuitous bit of magic to capture lightning in a bottle a second time.
Too bad they didn't invest a bit more in the magic of their beer.
Too bad they didn't invest a bit more in the magic of their beer.
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