Tecate: Somos BAX – By Nómades

“Somos Box“— We are box—, popularly known as “Te hace falta ver más box” is an ad campaign for the Mexican beer ‘Tecate’ created by the Mexican advertising agency ‘Nómades’, and produced by Central Films starring Sylvester Stallone.

After obtaining the sponsorship of the “Fight of the Century” between Pacquiao and Mayweather Jr with an investment of approximately 5.6 million dollars, the campaign seeks to give more visibility to the brand and strengthen their relationship with boxing, the second most popular sport in Mexico.

The first  campaign was launched on 2015 and consisted of a series of 4 videos filmed by the Breaking Bad director of photography: Ramsey Nickell, where Sylvester Stallone, with an intimidating presence and strong breathing, disapproves the behavior of 4 men and invites them to go back to their manly roots with the phrase “Te hace falta ver más box”.

The campaign only lasted 45 days, but that was enough to become a success. Since the moment the videos aired on TV and YouTube people noticed Sylvester’s Spanish mispronunciation of the word “box”. Unfortunately,  I think this only makes sense in Spanish, but it is basically like when Sofia Vergara says ‘Yiants’ instead of ‘Giants’. Watch Here and you’re going to understand.

This mispronunciation became a thing on social media instantly. People started to create memes to make fun of it by typing the word “Bax” instead of “Box” and using the hashtag #TeHaceFaltaVerMasBax; which rather than of negatively affect the campaign as many had thought, it helped it to become bigger and stronger.

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After that unexpected success, the company realized how powerful the joke was and they decided to adopt it and relaunch the campaign this 2016 with a clever twist: it is now called ‘Somos Bax!’,  just like the audience called it since it came out. ( Mhhh! They are working it!)

The videos are still about going back to the manly essence, but now that the phrase has caught on, the creative team was able to play with it by incorporating jokes about the mispronunciation of Sylvester Stallone and adding new faces like the famous Mexican boxer Julio Cesar Chavez. And we can see how far this campaign has gone by watching the video where Stallone doesn’t even need to say the entire phrase. That’s fame!

It seems that is true what they say, social media can make you or break you, and this time there is no doubt they make this campaign happen. Let’s give a round of applause to Tecate and the agency for not letting social media ruin their campaign and embracing this joke and make something big  with it.

But well.. at least this is my f opinion