Tooting your own horn... is that so bad?

I usually try to keep work-related stuff out of this blog, but there's no way I could keep this one out... This is from this week's issue of Brandweek:

If Tecate knows its drinkers, it's because this brand director knows them even better.
April 07, 2008

One of the new commercial spots for Heineken USA's Tecate beer shows a muscular Mexican man tossing an egg into the air. The egg symbolizes huevos—guts—and ties nicely into the tagline: "Para los que tienen lo que se necesita para estar aqui," which loosely translated means, "For those who have what it takes to make it here."

The commercial's imagery espouses the spirit of the Tecate brand by paying tribute to Mexican male immigrants as U.S. working-class heroes. But it also happens to say just as much about the man behind that brand, who also happens to be a young, hardworking immigrant and someone with the guts to make it here.

As Tecate's designated "Mexican-in-Chief," 37-year-old Carlos Boughton (whose official title is brand director) has been shepherding Tecate's positioning and messaging at Heineken USA for nearly four years. It's a task far more complex than it might look. Tapping into the rich iconography of the Mexican working-class experience, Boughton's managed to take the delicate themes of ethnicity and immigration, and forge them into an emotional branding message that's as unusual as it's impactful. "Carlos is open to exploring the uncharted, the route that's never been taken," said Manuel Wernicky, partner of New York-based Adrenalina, Tecate's lead agency. He credits the brand director for having the courage to "doubt the conventional."

For Boughton, the work of connecting Tecate with stateside consumers was indeed unconventional. But it was also personal, since the stories of today's Mexican immigrants could just as easily be his own, even though Boughton's quick to note that he's here legally and the ads wisely leave the issue of how some immigrants made the crossing up to the viewer.Boughton was the first person hired in 2004 by Heineken USA to work on Cerveceria Cuautemoc Moctezuma's (CCM's) brand portfolio, which includes Tecate, Carta Blanca and Bohemia, after the Mexican brewery shifted its U.S. brewing and distribution to Heineken from Labatt USA. Boughton took the job shortly after he'd just bought a home in Monterrey, Mexico.

To accomplish Tecate's unique messaging, Boughton had to persuade both his white colleagues at Heineken and his Mexican colleagues at Cerveceria to buy into the multilayered cultural imagery and language, a marked departure from traditional beer advertising that customarily relies on sophomoric humor and men behaving like boys. "He believed in [the new approach]," Wernicky recalled. "He took the time to sell it through, never never once saying, 'Let's have a Plan B.'"

Boughton credits his "outsider" status—being neither a product of American corporate culture or its educational system (he earned his MBA in Spain)—for his personal insight into the lives of Tecate consumers. He's known to conduct impromptu focus groups with Mexican delivery men who come to his Manhattan apartment. Effective marketing, Boughton said, "is more about believing the opinion of a Mr. Gonzales than in the opinion of Mr. Yankelovich." The belief has paid off. Tecate is the No. 4 import beer in the U.S., with an 8% increase in shipments last year, per Beer Marketer's Insights.

"You can't be an effective marketer if you believe that your consumer is a bunch of PowerPoint slides or pie charts," Boughton added. "You need to know your consumer at a much more personal level." Fortunately for Tecate, Boughton does.