Dos Equis launched Cerveza Express, Delicioso, Head Beer Coach and more in August 2018, marking its most ambitious creative overhaul since The Most Interesting
How Dos Equis Rebuilt Its Brand Identity After The Most Interesting Man
Dos Equis launched a suite of ten film assets in August 2018 under its broader Keep It Interesante platform, created by agency Droga5 and published exclusively in the United States, marking the brand's most substantial marketing overhaul since The Most Interesting Man in the World first aired in 2006.
The campaign encompasses a series of distinct film executions — among them Cerveza Express, Delicioso, Head Beer Coach, Rick, and Slurp — each built around a single strategic imperative: communicate the tangible pleasures of drinking Dos Equis rather than orbiting the mythology of a fictional celebrity spokesman. Where its predecessor elevated an aspirational character, the 2018 work centers the beer itself, deploying short-form film as the primary medium to reach US audiences at scale. The ten assets function as a coordinated system rather than isolated spots, creating multiple points of contact across the same creative universe while maintaining a consistent tonal register across each execution.
The campaign arrived at a pivotal commercial moment for the brand. As reported by Ad Age, the Keep It Interesante platform launched in March 2018 and represented a deliberate strategic pivot away from character-led advertising toward product-centric storytelling. In the United States, where the import beer segment had grown increasingly competitive, Dos Equis needed creative work capable of reestablishing emotional relevance without the scaffolding of its most famous campaign. Droga5 answered that brief with a multi-asset film series designed to demonstrate what the brand stands for on its own terms, independent of any single iconic figure.
Dos Equis faced a measurable commercial challenge entering 2018. According to Ad Age, Nielsen data showed the Dos Equis brand franchise recording a sales volume decline of approximately 5.8% year-to-date as of February 17, 2018, a figure that predated the Keep It Interesante repositioning and underscored the urgency behind the creative overhaul Droga5 was commissioned to deliver in the United States.
The strategic rationale was articulated directly by Quinn Kilbury, Brand Director at Dos Equis, in a statement published by Adweek on March 14, 2018. Kilbury confirmed: "He's not dead; we're intentionally not killing him, but we need to focus on the brand and get its benefits out to the world, versus a focus on The Man." That single sentence encapsulates the campaign's entire strategic architecture. The Most Interesting Man in the World — portrayed by actor Jonathan Goldsmith from approximately 2006 through 2016, according to reporting by NPR — had become so culturally dominant that the character was eclipsing the product. The 2018 work, including Cerveza Express, Delicioso, Head Beer Coach, Rick, and Slurp, was designed to invert that relationship and place the liquid experience at the center of every execution.
In the United States, the competitive environment in the import and premium beer segment intensified throughout this period. Brands such as Corona, owned by AB InBev, and Heineken maintained significant market presence, giving US consumers well-established alternatives. Against that backdrop, Droga5's strategy for Dos Equis prioritised differentiation through wit and sensory specificity rather than through lifestyle aspiration alone, a meaningful creative departure that the ten film assets were structured to execute across multiple consumer touchpoints.
Droga5 assembled a defined creative leadership team for the Dos Equis Keep It Interesante work. Executive Creative Director Scott Bell oversaw the campaign, with Creative Directors Ryan Raab, Chris Colliton, and Kevin Weir leading the conceptual development of the film series that includes Cerveza Express, Delicioso, Head Beer Coach, Rick, and Slurp, as documented on kevinjweir.com.
The creative approach across all ten film assets relies on tonal precision. Each execution deploys a distinct scenario or character type — the Cerveza Express execution leans into speed and service, Delicioso dwells in sensory pleasure, Head Beer Coach adopts the language of athletic coaching and applies it to the ritual of drinking beer — but all share a dry, self-aware comedic sensibility that distances the work from the earnest mythology of The Most Interesting Man in the World. The campaign does not ask audiences to aspire toward a lifestyle; it invites them to enjoy a moment. That tonal shift is itself a strategic creative statement, as reported by Ad Age in its August 31, 2018 coverage of the campaign.
The junior creative team included copywriter James Gross and art director Gianna D'Amico, with design direction from Devin Croda and design execution by Erin Wilson, per credits documented on kevinjweir.com. Film production was overseen by Director of Film Production Jesse Brihn. The ten-asset film structure reflects a production discipline that allows each execution to function independently while reinforcing the same brand voice — an architecture particularly well-suited to the fragmented media environment US audiences navigated in 2018, where attention is earned incrementally across multiple exposures rather than in a single broadcast moment. As reported by The Drum, the campaign signalled a meaningful creative evolution for Dos Equis in the United States market.
No verified performance data for the Cerveza Express, Delicioso, Head Beer Coach, Rick, and Slurp campaign is publicly available. No confirmed awards entries or wins at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC have been documented for this body of work. No published campaign-specific sales lift, market-share movement, brand-tracking data, or return on advertising spend has been reported by Dos Equis, Droga5, or any trade publication.
Structural analysis of the campaign's effectiveness nonetheless surfaces meaningful signals. The decision to deploy ten distinct film assets across a unified creative platform — rather than investing in a single hero spot — reflects an approach to reach and frequency that is particularly well-suited to the US digital video landscape in 2018, where platform algorithms reward content variety and publishers such as ispot.tv tracked discrete film executions as individual performance units. The creative architecture also hedges against the single-point-of-failure risk that the brand experienced when its attachment to The Most Interesting Man in the World made any departure from that character feel structurally destabilising.
Clapboard scores this campaign 64 out of 100. The mark reflects genuine creative ambition in conception and a disciplined multi-asset production strategy, balanced against the absence of a singular, culturally penetrative execution capable of replicating the brand-building force of its predecessor. The campaign represents a credible and strategically coherent foundation for Dos Equis in the United States, even if its executional range has not yet produced a single defining cultural moment.
Cerveza Express is one of ten film assets Dos Equis published in August 2018 as part of Droga5's Keep It Interesante repositioning in the United States. The broader campaign marked the brand's most significant creative overhaul since The Most Interesting Man in the World launched in 2006, shifting focus from character mythology to the beer itself.
Dos Equis chose to refocus advertising on the product rather than its spokesman. Brand Director Quinn Kilbury told Adweek in March 2018 that the priority was communicating the beer's benefits directly to consumers. The brand also faced a documented sales volume decline in the United States, per Nielsen data reported by Ad Age.
Droga5 created the Keep It Interesante campaign for Dos Equis. The agency's team included Executive Creative Director Scott Bell, Creative Directors Ryan Raab, Chris Colliton, and Kevin Weir, alongside junior creatives James Gross and Gianna D'Amico, as documented on kevinjweir.com. The campaign launched in the United States in 2018.
The Dos Equis campaign published in August 2018 comprised ten individual film assets. Named executions include Cerveza Express, Delicioso, Head Beer Coach, Rick, and Slurp. Each film functioned independently while sharing a consistent comedic tone designed to communicate the sensory pleasure of the beer to US audiences.
No confirmed awards for the Dos Equis 2018 campaign have been documented. No wins or entries at Cannes Lions, the Effies, The One Show, D&AD, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC are on record for Cerveza Express, Delicioso, Head Beer Coach, Rick, Slurp, or any other asset in the campaign.
Clapboard rates the Dos Equis Cerveza Express, Delicioso, Head Beer Coach, Rick, and Slurp campaign 64 out of 100. The score reflects creative ambition and a disciplined multi-asset film strategy, offset by the absence of a single culturally defining execution capable of matching the brand-building impact of The Most Interesting Man in the World.
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