How Tecate Reached 93% of Its Hispanic Target Audience on Facebook

via Ad Week

Here is the creative for a New Year's Eve-themed post for the beer brand.

While some brands have touted Facebook's advertising capabilities in recent years, other marketers and researchers have criticized the social giant, so it can be difficult to figure out if paid social media works. But Tecate shared positive results with Adweek that are insightful on a few levels, particularly the red-hot space of video. 

The beer marketer, which is owned by Heineken USA, leaned on Facebook's Anthology program during the 2014 holidays. Dubbed "Manfidence," its English-language effort pushed both Tecate and Tecate Light and was designed to be fun and street smart. And it targeted Latinos between 21 and 34 years old, marking the first time Anthology has creatively commandeered an initiative aimed at Hispanic-Americans.

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The results were striking: the videos and static promos reached 93 percent of the target audience, an average of 10 times per person, during the six-week run on Facebook desktop and mobile. Those stats appear to reflect the effectiveness of Facebook's custom audience and retargeting capabilities. 

Tecate's team didn't reveal the total number of impressions, but given Facebook's U.S. Hispanic audience of 26 million—it's unclear how many of them are men between 21 and 34 years old—one can still safely assume that millions were served the ads.

For instance, one humorous clip alone drew 217,000 views, accompanied by the following post: "What's the best way to gain the respect of your suegro [father-in-law]? With ‪#‎Manfidence‬." Another that drew 321,000 video views employed similarly themed text: "It's not easy to impress los suegros in the kitchen. The secret ingredient? #Manfidence."

The static ads (see images above and below) were developed by Facebook's Creative Shop division, while Starcom MediaVest's multicultural department, MV42, consulted on media buys. Tecate's social ads were complemented by radio spots and out-of-home appeals. The multi-channel approach generated "off the charts" awareness among the desired demo, said Gustavo Guerra Meza, brand director at Tecate.

"It really, really connected with consumers," he said. The Facebook ads, the brand director said, brought home the message of "men finding masculinity on their own terms. Guys who are comfortable in their own skin."

At the same time, after reviewing the #Manfidence effort, Martyn Tipping, CEO of social data shop StoryScore, said he thinks Tecate could have done better if it had expanded the campaign beyond Facebook to Twitter, YouTube and other social realms.

"The campaign has clearly delivered great short-term engagement for Tecate," he said. "But Facebook and other social platforms are an opportunity to tell an ongoing brand story, not just to promote a [short-run] campaign. From that perspective, Tecate still has a long way to go in terms of building a strong, ongoing dialog with Hispanic consumers on social media."

To that end, in terms of persistent social outreach, Meza plans to continue targeting that demo with Facebook's Anthology team "because of its creative muscle" in the coming weeks and months.

Meanwhile, New York researcher eMarketer predicts that digital ad spending will hit $91 billion by 2019, and there's little doubt online video will be a major channel as the overall space grows by leaps and bounds.

So Facebook can only hope that more brands like Tecate step forward with intriguing video results, especially since the mobile video competition is heating up with the upstart likes ofMeerkat and Twitter-owned Periscope—not to mention heavy hitters such as YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo and Twitter.com.