Building a coast-to-coast lifestyle brand.
File under: Brand Storytelling, Experiential Marketing & Events, Partnerships & Promotions
As legend has it,
Pacifico beer was first imported by some American surfers who had spent a summer catching waves in Baja. They had come across the cerveza on their trip and loved it so much that they brought a case or two back with them. The story goes that their friends in Southern California loved it too, and they went and did the same thing. Tell the story a few more times and that’s how a whole region and subculture became obsessed with an obscure Mexican beer.
However tall the tale may be, the marketing supported the myth when I started working on the brand in 2013: everything we created was conceptually tied to surf culture and targeted to that region. Our biggest retail campaigns and event activations were centered around the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach.
Retail campaign sample, 2015
My role here: Creative direction
Creative team: Jon Hibbert & Ben Ruggiero
Retail campaign concept, 2016
My role here: Art direction
Copywriter: Will Wilson
Retail campaign sample, 2019
My role here: Creative direction
Creative team: Tyler Schmidt & Morgan Barnett
Surfing has always been in Pacifico’s DNA and still is today — it informs the rugged, casual approach to design and art direction that can be seen throughout the work I’ve done for the brand. But the brand’s ambition, and my assignment for the last seven years, has been to reach beyond that small but passionate crowd of existing drinkers. My approach has been to try and grow the brand in ways that felt faithful to its roots without ever leaving them behind. This is a story in three parts.
Part I of III
Surfing the mountain.
If you don’t mind another legend, I’ll make this one quick: they say snowboarding was invented when Jake Burton Carpenter looked up at a snow-covered mountain, said, “I want to surf that,” and then did.
The end.
When Pacifico partnered with his company, Burton Snowboards, to sponsor the US Open of Snowboarding in Colorado, our assignment was to make the brand resonate with the same types of adventurous board-riders who originally fell in love with it. Our mission: make snowboarders and winter sports enthusiasts see our bright yellow can of ice-cold beer and say, “I want to drink that.” My key direction to the team: let’s ensure we don’t lose touch of the sun-drenched Baja vibes when we head up to the slopes.
Retail campaign sample, 2018. Using the brand’s bright yellow as a visual beacon mixed with a cut-and-paste poster aesthetic and a bold declaration, we appealed to consumers who were looking for something different during the holiday-dominated winter shopping timeframe. The promotion was simple but compelling while point-of-sale creative drove people to the brand’s social channels, taking the conversation out of the store and into their daily lives.
My role here: Creative direction
Creative team: Allie Musial & Will Wilson
The focal point of this partnership was a brand experience in Vail, CO during the US Open competitions. My team and I managed the design and build-out for two years as we brought the brand to life in three dimensions, offering consumers and VIPs alike a chance to enjoy some cervezas on the slopes and catch a view like no other.
Photos by David Gillette
Every tent in the VIP area started out exactly the same, and what each occupant did with theirs was up to them. We were the only ones to erect scenic walls and to carve out spaces within the space. Taking cues from industrial materials and deploying them in a laid-back layout, we were able to evoke the rugged origins of the brand despite being 8000 feet above sea level.
With a live feed of the event on three TVs and an endless flow of La Cerveza del Pacifico, we were undoubtedly the place to be.
Not pictured: the massive crowds who showed up every day to take in the action from our tent, which was the most popular by far in “VIP row.”
2016
Our tent was set up in the VIP area and access was mostly limited to representatives from Pacifico’s sales and distribution channels. Thus, our primary aim was to create a welcoming and memorable experience for those who spend their days working to get Pacifico featured and displayed in bars, restaurants, and stores across the country.
Other very important visitors included event athletes, sweepstakes winners, and Burton employees. For them and anyone who was coming to the brand for the first time, our goal was to treat them like family and have them leave as our newest brand ambassadors.
The 3D plans and photos of the final product are remarkably consistent, a testament to the expertise and communication between our team at Upshot and our builders in Vail.
My role here: Creative direction & demolition
Creative team: Alex Johnson, Diana Panek, Dennis Sulit
2017 & Beyond
The only thing that could be considered unsuccessful about the 2016 installation was the fact that we had to turn away scores of people every day who didn’t have VIP badges. The last thing Pacifico wanted to do was deny people the opportunity to discover their new favorite beer, so in 2017 we secured a spot down in “vendor village,” alongside brands like Toyota and Clif Bar who would all be trying to win attendees over with interactive experiences and free swag.
With all of this competition for attention, we knew we had to be more attractive than a standard expo tent. Like the VIP tent in 2016, the footprint was set but what we did with it was up to us. And what we did was go a little nuts with a fully custom build-out, the only of its kind in vendor village.
It didn’t hurt that we were serving beer but if you look at that landscape of standard-issue canvas pop-ups offering free samples and then see our bad-ass mini chalet, you can probably guess which space had people in it all day long.
Aside from collaborating with Upshot’s 3D team to design the space, my work was all over this thing in the form of my paintings on the walls and the Burton x Pacifico snowboards I designed flanking the bar.
For better and worse, the experience was so well received and our installation was so simple and sustainable that the client didn’t need us on the project anymore. The 2017 structure was re-used for the next couple years, installed and activated by a local agency rather than me and my team. If they had come calling again, I’m sure we’d have found a way to go even bigger and better.
My role here: Creative direction
Creative team: Kevin Meyer & Stacie Thompson
Raw wood and corrugated metal kept us consistent with the 2016 installation while the bright, airy design made our space feel much bigger than it really was. If you look closely you can see that our chosen method of distributing free swag was via a mini Plinko board, with all credit and respect to the game designers at The Price is Right.
Pacifico ambassador and Burton pro Zak Hale signed some autographs while guest bartending for a couple hours.
This guy just won a beanie. High five!
The work didn’t stop on the slopes. Pacifico was all over Vail during the events as we ensured our presence at every bar and restaurant in town and at sponsored events like concerts and after-parties, including the bowling tournament that I definitely could have won if I hadn’t been working.
Full beers at the half pipe.
One of many reminders to stay cerveza'd during the week's events.
A view of the top in 2017, including a giant inflatable beer that holds decidedly more than 24 ounces.
When putting together something this big the real fun is in the details, such as these custom tap handles that were everywhere.
"Open Minded" is one of my favorite headlines I ever helped usher into existence, almost too clever for its own good.
This guy's carrying one of the two Pacifco x Burton boards I've designed.
A scene from a Pacifico-sponsored after-party in Vail Village, complete with live music and a room decked out in our point-of-sale materials.
Pacifico even had a presence as a lead sponsor of the evening concerts, finding the people where they were after the shredding stopped.
Part II of III
Celebrating independent spirits.
Looking to appeal to a broader audience,
we only had to look at Pacifico’s successes for inspiration. While surfing and snowboarding share some obvious connections, at the end of the day the brand’s appeal wasn’t about riding a board. We were sharing a mindset with our drinkers. It was about the independent spirit common among those who cross borders in search of the perfect wave, or who look at mountains a little differently from everyone else.
One of our early campaigns to stretch beyond board sports ran in Mexican restaurants and independent grocery & liquor stores, looking to connect with two main target drinkers: adventurous eaters who were looking for something beyond the standard pairings, and Mexican-Americans who longed for an authentic taste of home.
The concept, and my on-set direction for this photography, was to showcase an approach to dining that was just as outgoing and fun-loving as a day at the beach or a ride down a mountain. The rich, textural, and loose imagery does just about all of the work here, capturing the same energy on camera as the more design-heavy surf and snow executions shown above.
My roles here: Creative & art direction
Creative team: Gaba Gonzalez, Lura Meisch, Will Wilson
Photos: Clayton Hauck
The campaign performed so well that the tools we developed are still in use today, five years after their launch.
So it doesn’t matter that you can’t hang ten in Dallas or scale a mountain in Chicago. There’s adventure to be found everywhere, even in a local taco shop. With this validation we continued our outward expansion with promotions that aimed to reward and facilitate beer drinkers’ adventurous, independent spirits.
Branded partnerships with Burton’s Durable Goods division and the retro-cool RV makers at Airstream were each concepted by me and my team and built around the insight that our drinkers would rather do their own thing than be told to do ours. And as always, the imagery was designed to evoke the sense of rugged adventure and endless possibility that comes with living a Pacifico lifestyle.
My role here: Promotional concept development
Creative team: Lura Meisch, Joel Richter, Will Wilson
Part III of III
Living life “Anchors Up.”
After all of our foundational work of expanding the brand in a believable, organic way, Pacifico was ready to go national with an integrated campaign featuring TV and out-of-home advertising. My team was primarily responsible for the retail/shopper support as Live Life Anchors Up launched from coast to coast.
Taking everything we’d learned from our adventures beyond Baja, we returned to the brand’s roots with a campaign that celebrated not just the search for a perfect wave but the good times and spontaneous moments of discovery that can happen when you set out on your own path.
An photo production in Mexico was the cherry on top, featuring real-life surfers and adventurers doing their thing in the place that started it all.
My role here: Creative direction
Creative team: Allie Musial & Will Wilson
Photos: Justin L’Heureux
Where to next?