I mean where do I start with this one?
I don’t need to point out what’s so odious about this one, but can you imagine how insufferable the kind of guy would be who calculates his every move from the time he enters a new bar?
What’s interesting here is that Modelo, a relatively shitty, low-rent beer, has invested some money in an advertising company that employs very smart people to help make it the new Tecate, which seems to’ve become the west-coast PBR owing to being inexpensive and never advertising. So Modelo might not be so smart, but these people they’ve hired? Very smart people. All commercials operate off our fears and anxieties, and nothing scares a twentysomething hipster more than not being cool. Or, more exactly, not being seen by others as cool.
I was always a nerd. I don’t remember how or when I learned that being an adult meant no longer needing to care what other people thought about me, but this is what I had faith in growing up. I understand worrying about whether you smell, or are pretty. But worrying about whether strangers in a bar you’ve never been inside think you have good taste? It’s maybe the definition of the hipster.
FACT CHECK:
1) Modelo and Negra Modelo are generally considered two of the better Mexican beers and/or the most indicative of the Mexican style. They’re even on tap at LA’s beloved Border Grill. The two Modelos are nearly 100 years old and are the flagship brands of Mexico City’s Grupo Modelo, which also brews Corona and Pacifico.
2) Tecate, while brewed in Monterrey by the company that also makes Dos Equis and Sol, is wholly owned by Heineken. Far from never advertising, Tecate has long plastered Los Angeles with billboards and has a partnership with ESPN. (I actually consider Tecate more the Coors Light of the west coast than the PBR.)
3) To the best of my knowledge, Modelo outsells Tecate in the US by a large margin.
4) Modelo is usually priced higher than Tecate.
THEREFORE:
I know you didn’t intend this, but it’s hard not to read the Modelo descriptor “low rent” as being derived from the beer’s undisguised Mexicaness, especially when Tecate, which has been rebranded to suit the American market, is by every definition much more “low rent.” Perhaps the new Modelo ad campaign is an attempt to remove the light racism directed toward the brand?
I don’t know anything about it. But if it’s not a low-rent beer, it’s certainly weird that it’s working to advertise itself as such, or that it’s aiming to connect not with the super-marketable beer-connoisseur crowd but rather the hyper-insecure dudes who opt for low-rent beers as a form of street cred.