Marketers Will Tell You When to Drink

And since Cinco de Mayo is on a Monday this year, they've turned this weekend into "Cinco de Mayo Weekend." That's an extra day of beer sales! Just as Guinness wants you to celebrate "St. Patrick's Season," Corona, Dos Equis and Tecate are on the air with ads, along with Jose Cuervo, Patron and I'm sure a variety of salsa makers, urging you to party like a frat boy on Spring Break in Cancún, Mexico's most Americanized location. Or party like a Girl Gone Wild at Daytona Beach, one of Florida's skankiest beaches.

Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride, observed primarily in the US, and though the beer makers would have you believe it is Mexican Independence Day, that is just a very-well marketed myth that has served to increase beer sales. It's not a holiday in Mexico. It's a reason to party in America.

Dos Quis has trotted out their "Most Interesting Man in the World" ads again, and their website is a pretty interesting bunch of discoveries based on the character. The "Most Interesting Man" reminds me somewhat of Chris Christmas Rodriguez, an overly macho character who makes you laugh as he redefines what it means to be a man.


For Corona's part, they're sticking with the beach thing, where bottles and limes are the main focus and life is a very relaxed party for two. Their website is a vertigo inducing exercise in finding the usual objects like desktop backgrounds, commercials and pictures.


Tecate, sadly, is under construction. No "interacting with the brand" here. Nobody "experiencing" Tecate. This is also the only site that is bilingual. By their placeholder pictures, one can assume Tecate favors a futbol-loving culture.

And does anyone really think that requiring a visitor to enter their age on an alcohol website will keep minors from entering an alcohol website? Time to get rid of that ridiculous custom.

So wear a silly hat, make embarrassing mariachi noises and shake your maracas while you down plenty of Mexican beer and tequila. It'd be the American thing to do.