Dos Equis Hosts Another 'Masquerade'

White Plains, N.Y. — Heineken USA’s premium Mexican beer brand, Dos Equis, strived to make Halloween a memorable event for revelers and retailers this year. With a “Masquerade” campaign running Sept. 15 to Oct. 31, Dos Equis deployed limited-edition bottles on retail shelves and encouraged consumers to grab a six-pack to enhance their Halloween celebrations. “Halloween is now the sixth largest beer-selling occasion of the year, and more than half of adults were likely to attend a Halloween party this year,” says Ryan Thompson, Dos Equis brand director, noting that Halloween fell on a Friday. “Dos Equis consumers celebrate in a big way, with lots of friends who share their experiences on social media.”The brand invited legal-drinking age consumers to enter a sweepstakes that awarded six grand-prize trips to an actual masquerade event on Nov. 22 in New Orleans. The campaign featured on-premise virtual reality experiences (via headsets) in which consumers entered a virtual masquerade.In its fourth year, the “Masquerade” program is a proven seller, driving as much as 27.3% lift at retail and 21.8% percent lift on-premise, Thompson says. This year, Dos Equis ran national TV advertisements, along with a robust digital and social media campaign to drive program awareness among consumers. The campaign was also supported by local radio and a dedicated microsite.Pre-shop promotional tactics by Evite, Brand.Net and InMobi were digitally employed to drive traffic to retail. In-store, “Masquerade” displays and other POS elements encouraged shoppers to purchase Dos Equis and upload or text photos of their receipt to enter the sweeps. Additional entry came by posting “Masquerade” and Halloween photos to Instagram.“Masquerade”-themed, limited-edition packaging was featured on 6- and 12-packs of Dos Equis Lager and Amber. Extravagant merchandising displays and POS were available to decorate retail outlets. In addition, Shopkick app integration drove shoppers to the shelf for one-on-one engagement.Among the retail partners were Kroger’s Fry’s and Smith’s divisions, as well as the military channel. Cross-category partnerships with Beam Suntory’s Casa Sauza and Twang Partner’s Twang beer salt helped increase retail basket sizes and create occasion destinations in-store. Additionally, channel-specific coupons were tailored to grocery, mass, convenience, drug and liquor stores to encourage the cross-category purchases.Dos Equis is measuring success for its 2014 “Masquerade” program by display execution, sales lift, volume increases and distribution increases, among others. Dos Equis’ goal is to continually improve performance and grow sales of the annual program.“The Masquerade program has improved every year as we gather and employ shopper insights and develop a better understanding of the category, retailer and shopper opportunities around the Halloween occasion,” says Jonathan Simpson, director of commercial marketing. “As a result, we’ve been able to develop a more robust program that creates a true ‘ecosystem’ around consumers and reaches them at optimal touchpoints throughout the path to purchase.”

Dos Equis Hosts Another 'Masquerade'

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