Corona, Canada's number one selling import beer, has enjoyed 22 years of steady growth with its "Beach" platform. But, in 2008, the tides turned and Corona was faced with an aging core consumer and a sudden and steady decline in sales. Something drastic was required. We first shifted the brand's focus to recruit a new generation of Corona drinkers: 20- to 34-year-old millenials.
To connect with this target, a new "Live Mas Fina" platform was created, a rallying cry to step outside of your comfort zone and live an extraordinary life. After its first six months in market, the new campaign not only stopped the sales decline, but reversed it. For the first time in three years, Corona was growing again. But how could it keep this sales momentum going beyond the summer months?
The solution lay with bringing together two unexpected assets of the brand in a retail promotion: the 473ml can (not the iconic bottle) and the brand's Mexican heritage. The idea was to use the can as a canvas to honour a traditional Mexican holiday, Day of the Dead. Despite its melancholy name, Day of the Dead is actually a salute to life and offered a unique synergy with the new positioning – through Day of the Dead, people could celebrate the lives of everyone who has Lived Mas Fina before us.
The brand started by designing three limited-edition tallboy cans featuring authentic Mexican skull art. Understanding that this target is influenced well before they set foot in a store, a mass and digital campaign drew them in.
Each campaign element featured a series of illustrations (inspired by the can designs) capturing the elements of a meaningful life through themes of love, adventure and thoughtfulness. The creative extended to Corona's Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages, as well as a social media contest inviting fans to win limited-edition silkscreen prints of the original illustrations. The prints were numbered and reserved for winners only, but mass-produced tear-away posters in the street allowed consumers to help themselves to a copy. The creative, which was meant to feel more like art than advertising, immediately captured people's attention both online and offline.
The cans sold out in LCBO and Beer Stores, and were up a remarkable 109.3% versus the same period last year. Corona posters were in such high demand that media partners couldn't keep up with replacements and hundreds of requests for can designs flooded in.