Beer advertisers seem to believe that images of buxom ladies, tailgating and frothy glasses are the ticket. It seemed that a fairly low degree of intelligence was assumed. Our research revealed that our target did actually have a brain and was rather irked by the clichés and sophomoric humour employed by much of the category. They felt misrepresented, misunderstood. These guys wanted to be seen as interesting. Inspired by this insight, we set out to turn the category on its head. In place of Joe Drinker with an easily relatable lifestyle, we created the Most Interesting Man in the World (MIM.) Instead of soothing the drinker with generic cues of masculinity, we used the sophisticated figure of the MIM, dashingly attired in Hemingway-style suits and situated in exotic and intriguing locales, to imply that all drinkers could and should be living a more interesting life.

The MIM’s collection of artifacts is unparalleled in its splendour. It runs the gamut from ancient Sumerian sculpture to rare 1980s mix-tapes. During a routine circumnavigation, the MIM was forced to perform an emergency landing. Rather than risk losing his artifacts, he jettisoned them mid-flight. Some were recovered, many were not. So he called upon his loyal friends and their vast talents to help recover his artifacts. Interactive: Hunters collected artifacts via exploration of a virtual Cargo Hunt map containing games and interesting content. Maps were refreshed daily to promote return visits. Trade codes incentivized trades via social media. Winners earned the ultimate Mexican adventureEvents/PR: Lounges featuring challenges and reward codes were set up at major festivals throughout the U.S.Retail: Packaging contained artifact inserts. POS featured hidden mobile text codes.On Premise: Sampling models facilitated real time mobile scavenger huntsTV/Radio/OOH: Kept the MIM’s legend top of mind

• Since the Cargo Hunt launch, unique visits to dosequis.com increased 25%, while total visits increased 56%. Visits were received from 175 countries.• 586,000 artifacts were collected, with consumers making 130,000 artifact trades via social media.• The Cargo Hunt garnered over 44,000 registered users, a 76% increase over the previous year’s Most Interesting Academy.• Dos Equis was the first beer brand to reach the 1MM Fan mark on Facebook, an impressive feat for a brand with 2.45% share of the Import category. • Dos Equis was the fastest growing import brand in the country for the second year in a row with 2010 sales +21.66%, outpacing the category growth of +1.11%.

• Dos Equis continued to successfully infiltrated pop culture with mentions, imitations and spoofs appearing everywhere including but not limited to The Tonight Show, Entourage, Saturday Night Live, Parenthood, Sports Nation, and The Daily Show.