Hasta La Creative!

Last year Mexican import Corona Light tried to gain ground against its larger domestic light beer foes with ads featuring talking sheep that encouraged drinkers to “ditch the herd” and try something new.

It’s not as if Corona Light failed with its earlier ad attempts to target domestic lights. The brand grew dollar sales by 5.6% in the year ending Jan. 26 to $218 million, according to IRI, which excludes bars and restaurants. That compares with a 10.9% drop in sales of imported rival Heineken Light, which fell to $61 million in sales, according to IRI. But Corona Light — which only began running separate campaigns from big brother Corona Extra in 2010 — remains a fairly small player. The brew has a 4.9% share of all imported beer sales and is a whole lot smaller than Bud Light, which had $5.9 billion in sales in the period.

The goal of the Corona Light campaign is to “break through the clutter” of big-spending domestic brews by zeroing in on an older audience of drinkers ages 35 to 44, said Jim Sabia, chief marketing officer of the beer division at Constellation Brands, which owns Corona. “We were being outspent 60-to-1,” he said, referencing brands such as Bud Light, Miller Lite and Coors Light. So this year “we are really going to target who is drinking us the most.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com