E-Malt.com News article: Mexico & United States: Tecate beer still focused on Mexican immigrants

Tecate beer, which focuses all its U.S. marketing efforts and ad dollars on Mexican immigrants, has launched a beer for the next generation, Tecate Light, AdAge.com published on May, 4.

"We believe Tecate should only speak in Spanish," said Mr. Boughton, brand director, Tecate Equity. "In authentic Mexican language, not a pan-Hispanic approach. You often water down your message by going very broad."

Despite the recession, he said Tecate's sales grew 6% last year in a flat market, and were up 13.3% by volume in Hispanic markets during the first quarter of 2009. Tecate, distributed in the U.S. by Heineken USA, has close to a 20% share of imports in Hispanic markets, and is the No. 1 imported beer among Hispanics, Mr. Boughton said.

Tecate also made a strategic decision that soccer is too broad and has too many clubs and countries for any brand to own, but that it could put its stamp on another sport popular with Mexicans: boxing. When a Spanish-language network canceled a weekly boxing show last year and Tecate lost a boxing platform, the beer marketer asked networks and producers for ideas, reviewed proposals, and went with ESPN. Now a Tecate-sponsored Friday-night fight show airs on Spanish-language ESPN Deportes, hosted by a boxing champ who appears in Tecate commercials. The fights also air on English-language ESPN2, sometimes with Tecate ads in Spanish.

"If we're going to approach the general market in any way, we're going to do it with boxing," Mr. Boughton said.

In 2008, Tecate spent $15.8 million on Hispanic media, up from $10 million in 2007, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Of that total, $2.7 million was spent on Tecate Light and $318,000 on sponsorship.

New ads are breaking to lure Tecate drinkers' more acculturated kids to Tecate Light. Born in the U.S., they are more similar to general-market drinkers than to their Mexican parents.

"In Mexico, the light-beer category is small but in the U.S., it's half the industry," Mr. Boughton said. "An immigrant's average age is about 25, so his frame of reference is the Mexican industry, with two beer giants and about 12 brands."


06 May, 2009