The Battle For the Most Interesting Man in the World Title

Make no mistake, there is a battle going on.  It's fierce, it's bloody, and it's foreign.  Sound like something out of Central Asia?  Well, you'd be mistaken, the battle is in the booze.  Beer as a matter of fact.  With the incredibly overwhelming success of the Most Interesting Man in the World campaign by Dos Equis created by Euro RSCG of New York, Heineken decided it needed to ride this wave too.  What makes this type of campaign so appealing that the Dutch brewers want to jump on board?  Lets take a look:

Historically beer drinking wasn't associated with class.  Many of the drinkers  had a rough edge to them and saw it as a recreation drink or relaxation drink.  Picture a beer at a baseball game, or tailgating at a football game, or best of all, "bartender give me a beer".  With this type of audience already firmly entrenched as a drinking base it was time to reach out to other drinkers.  A subtle message that is permeated throughout the campaigns is that everyone can drink a beer.  These campaigns can be as educational as they can catchy.  With this in mind it's interesting to see how similar yet different these two campaigns are.  The end goal is to have one of the catchier campaigns, reach a new audience and get people to buy your beer because of the campaign you put together.

Dos Equis:

I love this guy, he's my hero, he's who I want to be in 30 years.  Problem is that it's in 30 years.  What about in the meantime?  Well, Dos Equis has done a great job of inserting clips from "his life" throughout all of the the ads.  The ideas for their creativity has been astounding.  Essentially clips of a man throughout his life showing all of the amazing things he has done, stuff that you and I could only dream about.  His life reads like a story book or a novel.  He has rubbed shoulders with dignitaries, explored in places that are so remote not many people have been there.  Accomplished tasks that still show up in record books.  All while wooing women and smiling.  He's exotic with a beard.  His accent can't even be placed, is he Spanish?  Dunno, German?  Dunno... his origin is as interesting as he is.

As part of the overall message, Dos Equis has really appealed to the young professionals, shooting for the 25-40 year old range who still think they can be that guy.  It's a fun campaign that has changed the way we look at Dos Equis.  Having an exotic foreign name to it has helped too.  Having gone from almost complete obscurity to on of the most talked about beers out there, congratulations, it worked.  It worked so well that I now can't wait for the next Most Interesting Man in the World commercial.

Heineken:

A little known fact is that Heineken owns Dos Equis.  So the big question is why would they compete with themselves?  The answer isn't so easy to explain.  There are two sides to this.  In case you haven't seen the ads, there is a young man whose nationality can't be placed (the spot was shot in Spain with a French actor) but totes a thin beard and is dark haired.  He enters a room and immediatly greets all sorts of people.  These people range from Indian women to foreign dignitaries.  There is even a scene with a Martial Arts expert.  Essentially the man is good at everything and has done everything in order to meet and greet these people.  Everyone loves him and he too is one of the Most Interesting Men in the World.

To answer the question of why compete?  The overall success of the Dos Equis campaign had to be so overwhelming that the big whigs thought it would be Okay to introduce a little competition. Rivaling The Most Interesting Man in the World (TMIMW) is a very hard thing to accomplish.  He is distinguished and has a take on life that we would all love to have.  So to introduce a spunky young man into the mix and try to take some of that real estate was a tough task to ask.  Heineken did a really good job through the agency Weiden + Kennedy of Amsterdam in making this young buck "interesting".  The campaign is older than you would think. It started in 2010 and has been a viral hit for a while but starting in March 2011 went mainstream.

The music, the feats, the person, all scream a younger peppier version of TMIMW but will it last and will it win?  Heineken sure hopes so because of this being their flagship brand and precedence for the rest of the company.  They are confident that this globtrotting youngster will inspire people in their exploration of the world and their Beer. “Heineken wants to elevate our drinkers by showing aspirational behavior — our consumer knows how to navigate the world, is confident, open-minded and resourceful,” spokeswoman Tara Carraro told Ad Age.

  Regardless Heineken is sure looking to brand itself very similarly to Dos Equis.  The difference being a peppy and young look trying to inspire young people to behave a certain way.  Heineken will never touch what Dos Equis as done and I think it's safe to that The Most Interesting Man in the World is still in a league of his own.  He was a first mover and carries a mystique to him that can't be matched. Our young Heineken friend looks like one of his disciples but as was with Peter or Paul, there is no replacing the Master.

UPDATE: The latest commercials.

The hype leading up to the launch, hitting your target.

One of my current clients has been working on raising some hype for one of their products.  It made me think of the hype that companies raise in order to grow awareness.  One recent campaign that is a few  years old is the Android campaign where pre-launch commercials were produced and run non-stop through every major event.  I remember watching them through the Superbowl and every other major event.  When the phone was finally released the brand had been established and the consumers knew everything about it.  It seems to have lived up to exactly 89.3% of the hype.  It was positioned to rival the iphone and is sorta kind of doing that.

In the outdoor and sports world this type of things is a little more difficult to do.  Consider this: if The North Face wanted to launch a new type of coat that would be the end all be all for any type of activity (never gonna happen but I'm just saying).  How would TNF position this?  First of all you would have to consider the fact that not everyone is going to purchase your product.  Your target market is very defined.  Someone in Arizona or Florida is not going to need your product.  With a phone, everyone buys a phone and wants a phone.  This is not the same with outdoor products.  TNF would launch a huge campaign to hit their demographics but the ROI on that investment wouldn't be very good.  Conversely if TNF targeted their campaign to the traditional outdoors outlets they would probably sell the exact same amount of product.  It's like I've said before, those who are going to buy it are going to buy it.

This leads again to the question of how do you hype a product before you launch it if your results are going to be the same without the additional costs of the campaign?  The answer is long and murky but here is the brief version of it all.

Currently the mentality of the "next big thing" doesn't really exist in the outdoors community.  It doesn't make sense to do it.  The results will be the same without the spend.  Gun manufacturers have attempted this but it requires someone following the industry intently.  The best way to hype an upcoming product or brand is to piggy back on what is currently being done by the company.  There are plenty of really good campaigns out there but instead of completely focusing all the efforts on the next product only about 20 - 30% of the focus should be used on the next product.  While a complete campaign will need to be run for the product it's much safer to utilize the space of a current product that is doing really well.  One example of this is in the outdoor clothing space.  Take my old favorite Under Armour.  What Under Armour has done is utilized what they have done in the past, leveraged their brand and put together small campaigns announcing or advertising upcoming products.  A great example is ski and snowboarding clothing.  There was never a big campaign or even a lot of money spent, rather by inserting it as an option or "see our winter line" on their website they were able to spark interests and create the next "big" for them.

It's a tough industry to revolutionize.  That's why building large amounts of hype just doesn't work.  You have to parlay your current hype of one product into the next thing that is coming along.  Unless the overall product is really something that is show stopping it's not going to be worth the costs of creating the hype.  The outdoors market is finicky and has to be treated as such.  Make sure your campaign is concerted and hitting the right target.  One proven way is to utilize other products that already have awareness.

The world loses a true outdoorsman and an amazing person: Garrett Smith

The world becomes a lesser of a place when a good person is taken from us on this earth.  I knew Garrett Smith from interactions at church and inviting him and his wife over for a gathering of friends.  It's odd when you can just sense that someone his great.  There is greatness about them.  Despite Garrett's great size at 6'7" I could still feel that he was a great man.  We chatted about life, the outdoors, and what we wanted to do with ourselves.  He always wore a scarf.  Garrett was truly man enough to wear a scarf.  We talked about the purpose they served and how in the desert they are essential to keep all the sand and sun out.  I thought he was just talking but later when I learned about his life and what he had done and seen our conversation made more sense. 

Garrett was a world traveler, a photographer, a mountaineer, a climber, a skier, a husband, a brother, a son, an uncle, and a friend.  Garrett traveled to Morocco, Israel, Africa, Europe, lived in Spain, spent a lot of time in Central America, skied backcountries and saw many other parts of the world that most people can't even imagine.  Garrett ultimately lost his life doing what he loved, he was backcountry skiing in Central Utah around 11,000 feet on Saturday March 26th and passed away on the 27th.

I can honestly say he affected me however little I knew him. He had the ability to affect people with minimal interaction, he did it with a big smile and quiet confidence.  When the world loses someone good we all are affected.  I was deeply touched by him and by his wife.  They were and she still is, avid outdoorsmen and amazing people.  I admire him for what he accomplished in life.  He has an amazing gallery of photos on his website www.hammersincphoto.com.  We had reached an agreement to refer people to each other to do work with the outdoors clients. Garrett worked for Petzl the maker of quality headlamps.  He saw the world differently.  He was a falconer and had a pet hawk that he trained when he was a teenager.  He ran the Wasatch 100 without much training.  He did things we only dream about.  He was quiet and sarcastic.  He was stoic and strong.  I want to remember him and think of how what he did and his outlook on life.  Ever the optimist, he valued each day and lived it to the fullest.  This life was about the journey for him.  We all need to be a little more like Garrett.

Here is the story told by the news in Utah.