Heineken USA ends partnership with Mexican ad agency as English-language campaigns didn’t translate
Heineken USA has announced that it will no longer use Mexican-based ad agency Olabuenaga Chemistri for its US advertising of Tecate beer after it found the creative ideas were being lost in translation.
Instead, Heineken will work with Texan agency Inspire on future English-language campaigns for the Mexican brand beer.
Tecate VP-Marketing Felix Palau explained to AdAge: "We realized that when a Mexican agency tries to develop English creative, it feels translated. So in all honesty, we were not comfortable with the delivery."
Palau added that he is comfortable with Inspire because the agency's employees are themselves "bi-cultural", saying: "They speak English and they speak Spanish. They absolutely get these consumers … They have it in their DNA."
Inspire has also taken over from Olabuenaga on the advertising of Mexican lager brand Indio, which Heineken USA released to US markets last year.
Olabuenaga will, however, continue to work on the Spanish-language advertising.
UPDATED: Olabuenaga Chemistri has announced that it will continue to be Tecate’s agency for Spanish-language creative, and iNSPIRE! has simply been added to the roster.