Imported beer sales are currently slumping and the product category as a whole is in need of revitalization. For these businesses, branding a brew as German is not going to cut it, and making yourself stand for something more than an imported beer is vital to turning things around. With “The Most Interesting Man in the World” campaign, Dos Equis has done this, growning their business by representing a larger, more interesting idea.
The spot presents us with an archetype to aspire to, the world’s most interesting man, who (of course) prefers Dos Equis when he drinks beer. The hope is people will buy into this ultra-charismatic character who has come to personify the Dos Equis brand, which is about more than a beer. It’s a vital part of a swank, tongue-in-cheek buccaneering lifestyle. It’s “living vicariously through yourself,” playing jai-alai without dying, and arm wrestling deceased heads of state like Chairman Mao and Winston Churchill on www.dosequis.com. In a virtual effort to get people to subscribe to the concept, they’ve also created The Most Interesting Academy, where you can go through several online games designed to teach you how to be more interesting. A reality TV show based on the search for the world’s most interesting man’s assistant will air on Mojo HD this fall.
Of course, Dos Equis isn’t taking any of this too seriously. By creating such an over-the-top character, the whole campaign pokes fun at itself and how ridiculous brand personifications can be, especially the ritzy ones typically associated with high-end spirits and beer. The joke is a really clever one, and it exists throughout different media, even getting its own reality TV show. As a result, more people know what Dos Equis is and what they stand for: a quick wit and a good laugh. Ultimately, having a good time is the business that Dos Equis is really in.
Brands that need revitalization also must ask themselves what they are really selling. This insight may just help your brand become relevant again, too.
Ad campaigns that revitalize brands do so by reaching people in new, unexpected ways to break down barriers. The same can be said for movie premieres. The first rule in cutting through the clutter is not to be clutter. And that means breaking some traditional advertising rules.
Even though it was a launch campaign, the innovative way the sci-fi movie District 9 connected with its target consumers this summer provides some strong lessons for brands in need of revitalization.
D-9 premiered in August. Instead of running a normal trailer on TV to promote the movie, a different approach was taken.
Beside the vague information in the film teasers, no additional details were released. They also ran the ads below at the Comic-Con convention, the surest place to find gobs of sci-fi fanatics.
All media drove traffic to D-9.comwhich, like the TV spot, presented a fictitious company named Multi-National United that was at the center of a vague human vs. non-human war of sorts. Several other sites, like multinationalunited.com, mnuspreadslies.com and mathsfromouterspace.com, served as further insights into the film’s world, which had become an alternative reality supported throughout multiple media platforms. The marketing content wasn’t directly selling the movie, but rather selling D-9′s narrative as real and allowing the audience to investigate this proposed reality. Confusing? Maybe, but not to the prospective moviegoers. (More on the D-9 campaign here)
The idea of advertising through alternative reality games has been done before with Audi’s Art of the H3ist campaign, the movie Cloverfield and the TV show Lost. It works by using content to pull users in rather than pushing content out. The tech-savvy target seeks out information about the product, in D-9′s case from the various websites and the trailer, and converses through blogs and word of mouth to piece together the information seeded by the marketer.
D-9 does not represent the first time alternate realities were used in marketing, but this promotion was so well thought out and so nicely orchestrated, one could argue that it set a new standard for promoting a movie, or at least a sci-fi movie. It all worked by using content to pull users in rather than pushing content out to them. The tech-savvy targets sought out information about the product, met and discussed online, and became loyal fans long before D-9′s first showing.
The lesson here is simple. If you want your brand to be different, do something different.
