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Jarritos Mural. Photo courtesy of adsoftheworld.com

The New York Times recently highlighted the efforts by Mexican soda brand Jarritos to penetrate the U.S. general market. The ad campaign, which is being rolled out initially in Austin Texas, features the tagline “We’re not From Here” and features classic images from Mexican popular culture, such as wrestler’s masks and taco trucks.

Novamex, the Agency of Record, has hired the Austin street artist Federico Archuleta to paint murals in Hollywood, Venice Beach and elsewhere with designs like a skull wearing a sombrero surrounded by Jarritos, as seen in the image at left. They’re also handing out samples in the L.A. area by driving large tricycles driven by men in Mexican wrestling garb, accompanied by a food truck. The innovative campaign makes it clear that Novamex did its homework and found out who the best target market is to spread the word about Jarritos.

One criticism raised in the article is whether Jarritos has invested in proper distribution of its product. Genaro Gutierrez of the University of Texas states that, “If you convince me to buy something and then I don’t find it, I’ll forget it in five minutes”. Once Jarritos is able to place their sodas- with flavors like guava, tamarind and mango- in stores where they are readily available to the non-Hispanic consumer, it will be interesting to see how many bottles of the colorful soda are purchased.

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