Drink responsibly - Corona Beer | Clapboard Ad Archive
Corona Beer, together with JWT, delivered a sharp intervention into Spain’s Food & Drink advertising landscape in 2013 with Drink Responsibly – a campaign that asked audiences to look twice at the risks of alcohol, literally. Uniting the universes of cinema and public health, Corona leveraged the rare use of the big screen for ambient advertising by targeting film connoisseurs at a high-attention moment: the opening minute and a half of a movie premiere. Instead of the anticipated crisp visuals, audiences were confronted with deliberate visual distortion, engineered to mimic the blurry vision experienced under the influence of alcohol. The tension in the room was tangible as the disruption bent not just story expectations, but audience comfort, forcing a self-reflexive pause before landing its message with clarity and impact: Drink Responsibly. What Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#3—Symbolize the Problem, this campaign eschewed the familiar route of heavy-handed warnings or lifestyle montages and instead used a sensory analogy that allowed viewers to inhabit the advertised problem firsthand. The creative logic flipped traditional responsibility messaging: rather than being told, the audience felt – and in a uniquely memorable setting. Corona’s alignment with Sony Pictures Releasing Spain expanded the work from a single brand statement into a layered piece of branded entertainment, seamlessly embedded in culture and offering both a spectacle and a social warning. Such an approach sidestepped creative fatigue in an industry saturated with literal drinking-and-driving metaphors, achieving a rare blend of emotional persuasion and stylistic fluency. Clapboard rates this 71/100. This campaign matters because it demonstrates how unexpected creative format choices, especially in legacy environments like cinema, can dramatically renew public health messaging in the alcoholic drinks industry when executed with acute audience insight.
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