#dos equis

Dos Equis is the best beer hands down. Tajin on the rim and lime juice in it. FIREEE 👻👻👻👻

Me: Oh, please go ahead. I am anxiously awaiting your analysis and commentary.

The best ad campaigns are the ones that produce the biggest bump in sales. After all, that’s the end game for every company that has something to sell. While some see advertising as an investment, I prefer to call it what it really is: an expense. Look at the income statement. Where does it go?

Yeah. It’s expensed out. Either way, though, you don’t want to be throwing money away, good money chasing bad, you know.

Those most effective ads are always memorable, but not all memorable ads are effective. Sometimes the ad is so good that people forget the brand. Now you’re just entertaining people, kind of like what we see in a lot of Super Bowl ads. And stay tuned for my first Super Bowl advertising blog coming soon!

It makes you wonder why a company would ever quit using something that works, is memorable, and produces a profound increase in sales. That’s precisely what happened to Dos Equis, the Mexican beer brand owned by Heineken. From 2006 through 2016 they ran their “Most Interesting Man In The World” campaign, and sales tripled. Cha-ching.

But they pulled the campaign in 2016, even though the MIM had become such a pop culture icon that memes were created and the social graph ran with it. About this time the connection between the MIM and the brand became lost. I’ll be honest and say that I completely forgot who he was promoting, but I sure knew the meme.

He’s bacaaack, though! He returned in some teaser spots earlier this month in college football broadcasts. The revived campaign also dropped this week on Instagram and LinkedIn, and aired Monday night when my alma mater, Indiana, did what they had to do to Miami. (Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoosiers!). The MIM will also show up this weekend during the NFC Championship game as part of the new Stay Thirsty campaign that Dos Equis will use throughout the year.

It does make you wonder why they retired him in the first place. Maybe execs thought it had simply run its course, that they couldn’t tell any more brand stories with it. Maybe they were cozy with sales tripling and wanted to take a rest.

Things are different now. Nostalgia is trending, and consumers love anything that is a throwback. While beer as a whole is in a sales slump, premium imported Mexican beers are growing the fastest within the category. And…here’s the most important part…much has changed since 2016. Advertising on social media has exploded, and, let’s face it, social tensions are high these days and maybe we all could just use a non-partisan laugh.

Fortunately, the same actor—Jonathan Goldsmith—was available for the resurrection. The fact that he looks a little more—shall we say—aged fits right into the narrative. He has returned from a scripted bout of amnesia, and why wouldn’t we expect him to look a little worse for the wear?

Many brands throughout marketing history have found that secret sauce, only to retire it and then wonder what happened in the aftermath. I recall the famous 7-Up Un-Cola ads of the early-1970s, which put the brand on our perceptual radar. They dropped the campaign, and 7-Up returned to being the sodas your parents kept under the kitchen sink for when you had an upset tummy. They revived the campaign in the 1980s, but it was too late.

And then there was Coca-Cola’s “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing” campaign in the same time frame. It is a rare example of an ad campaign being so popular that the song reach #2 in the UK, and #7 in the US. But then they dropped it, which allowed Pepsi to mount their Pepsi Challenge a few years later, and with great success at least for the moment.

Dr Pepper also made a similar mistake. Their “I’m A Pepper” campaign was effective in educating consumers about the brand, and setting it apart from other sodas. Why they would veer away from a successful ad leaves me wondering. Today, though, the soft drink business is very different, with Coca-Cola Classic the top brand, followed by Dr Pepper, Sprite, Pepsi, and Diet Coke. Note who holds down three of the top five positions.

Back to Dos Equis and the MIM, and I am looking forward to seeing more installments of this familiar face. I might even hoist a bottle or two just to play along. This is good marketing, and good marketing should never be shelved. It should be preserved, curated, updated as needed, but always…and this is the key word…must be consistent.

That way old people like me won’t forget which beer he is selling.

Dr “I’ll Drink To That” Gerlich