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Spurred by strong interest in three upcoming fights, including an HBO pay-per-view event, Tecate is sparring with the idea of focusing its marketing plan more on boxing.
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Tecate Eyes Boxing as Knockout Sport
August 25, 2008
By Della de Lafuente
NEW YORK With three upcoming boxing events and an HBO pay-per-view event punching up interest in the sport among Hispanics, Tecate is sparring with the idea of focusing its marketing plan more on boxing.
The cerveza earlier this month mounted an advertising push centered on Mexican Independence Day (Diez y Seis de Septiembre), touting three major boxing bouts the brand is promoting during September in Houston, Las Vegas and Los Angeles -- a first for the brand to sponsor three boxing events in different cities in a single month.
Early reports on ticket sales show that for the lightweight boxing event in Houston on Sept. 6, an initial block of 3,000 tickets were sold in a couple of days, followed by an additional block of 4,000 tickets with the sold-out venue expected to draw as many as 20,000 to the Toyota Center for a fight between Juan Diaz and Michael Katsidis.
For the sold-out championship fight featuring Joel "El Cepillo" Casamayor vs. Juan Manuel Marquez on Sept. 13 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Tecate is rolling out a national TV effort on Univision, Azteca America, TeleFutura and Fox Sports en Espanol to promote the pay-per-view fight and reinforce Tecate's association and commitment to boxing.
"We've had a lot of good results with the boxing platform and in leveraging the fights [sponsored by Tecate] to build this association," said Carlos Boughton, Tecate's brand director. "We think that there's a lot of opportunity to take boxing to the next level and in how we can influence a boxing show on TV to make it look unique and to make it project more boldness, more character and more masculinity, which is what Tecate is all about."
One year into its sponsorship of major boxing events featuring boxers from Oscar De La Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions, Tecate is poised to increase its ad spending on boxing, though the exact amounts are unclear, and even to some day elevate the sport to its primary marketing vehicle for reaching its core consumers, Mexican male immigrants.
Tecate also is the primary sponsor of TeleFutura's "Solo Boxeo Tecate."
"It's our belief that boxing will continue to be either the main or one of the two platforms that we use for a brand like Tecate," Boughton said, noting that boxing also has proven beneficial where it counts: at the retail sales level.
"Boxing, especially a pay-per-view fight, is a viewing occasion that brings value to the retailer and [Tecate's] distributor sales. The consumer will go into the store to shop for this viewing occasion, where a number of people are going to get together, buy the pay-per-view and watch the fight," he said. "All in all it's been an amazingly successful program."
Though it's unclear whether Tecate would entirely abandon its sponsorship of professional soccer events in the U.S., programs that have also been successful in their own right, Boughton said "trying to associate a brand to soccer is still a difficult proposition."
He noted soccer's vastness as the biggest sport in the world, its relevance to a number of demographic groups (not just U.S. Hispanics) and its increasingly crowded space for marketers. "Soccer is just so big. You can argue it both ways: It's so big that it has a space for everybody and that can be a good or a bad thing. Or, because everybody is looking at soccer now [as a marketing vehicle], maybe we shouldn't," he added.
With the format for boxing on TV largely unchanged, Boughton said his team is working with promoters and broadcasters to help advance the sport while maintaining its relevance to Hispanic consumers who follow it.
"Instead of molding Tecate to boxing, we're looking at ways to mold boxing to Tecate. How do we make it bolder, how to we make it about character, and how do we evolve the sport," Boughton said. "We're beginning to build relationships with all of them and we think that they've seen that we can bring something of value to the sport and that we're looking at it in a way that other sponsors haven't done before."
Tecate's ad spending on Hispanic network and cable TV has reached $6 million through June of this year. Media spending on Hispanic TV totaled $13.5 million last year, down from $14 million in 2006, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.
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