Tecate Tests Targeted Video on Bicultural Audience
To better understand its multicultural target audience, Tecate has released a series of short videos to gauge audience response for its next campaign.
To better understand its multicultural target audience, Tecate has released a series of short videos to gauge audience response for its next campaign.
Beer brand Tecate Light has recently released a series of short videos for its “Born Bold” campaign, hoping to both engage its target audience and collect data for its next digital campaign.
In order to better understand its Millennial audience of second- and third-generation Mexican Americans, Heineken-owned Tecate first had to understand its audience’s culture, one that straddles Mexican and American heritages. Tecate’s target audience usually speaks two languages, Spanish and English, and is increasingly smartphone savvy.
In fact, 14 percent of Hispanic consumers rely on smartphones as their primary source of Internet connection as opposed to just 4 percent of white consumers, according to recent Pew research.
With that in mind, Tecate made the decision to meet its audience where they live with four 60-90-second, mobile-optimized pre-roll spots on YouTube and Facebook.
“Our audience is bicultural and also Hispanic,” says Belen Pamukoff, brand director of Tecate. “Statistically, they are second- or third-generation Mexicans born in the U.S., but their grandparents or parents are from Mexico, and they live between these two cultures. Their heritage is from Mexico, but they are Americans who consume a lot of media on iPhones and iPads.”
Hispanic Millennials are just as likely as their Millennial counterparts to be on Facebook; however, they’re twice as likely to watch videos on YouTube. And since Hispanic millennials are consuming most of their media on mobile, Tecate tailored its videos to fit a smaller screen, shooting them in the style of someone using a smartphone camera. The brand also took pre-roll limitation into consideration and began each video with an image, such as a still of a boxing match, that tested well among target groups.
“When guys are going through their Facebook newsfeeds, they are going very quickly; they’re not stopping,” Pamukoff says.“The first video begins with boxing, a passion point for our target consumer. Each video has to capture their attention to stop their thumb from scrolling their newsfeed.”
For Tecate, the insights that come from this pre-roll campaign are nearly as important as the videos themselves. They’re listening constantly for social feedback from a group that has been notoriously hard to pin down as it oscillates from one culture’s viewing habits and preferences to another.
“We want to learn how our audience engages with the brand,” Pamukoff says. “There’s always a better way to do things. You cannot put something out there in digital and say, ‘This worked perfectly. We’re fine for the year, so let’s just beat it.”
Instead, Tecate is testing for “science, speed, and storytelling,” as defined by whether the videos draw attention away from other domestic brands by reaching their intended audience of Hispanic Millennials living in the Sun Belt. Tecate is also looking at whether or not that audience chooses further engagement with the brand in the form of brand mentions, comments, views and shares.
To measure these three types of engagement, the brand often tests the videos against each other, measuring engagement with one video against the next. Combined, this data should make for a longer, even better campaign in the near future.
“There are many things we want to take out of this,” Pamukoff says. “And when we do this next year, it’ll be different because we’re not just competing with other beer. Now we’re competing with their friends on social media for their attention.”