The Dos Equis - Most Interesting Man In the World advertising campaign first launched back in late 2006 and was an instant success propelling both the actor who played the title role and the beer brand into international fame. This hilarious international campaign for the brand would continue for almost a decade.

Who Was the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man In the World?

In 2006 ad agency Euro RSCG/NYC (now Havas Worldwide ) launched an advertising campaign on behalf of the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery for their Dos Equis brand named “The Most Interesting Man In The World.” A quick insert though - the history behind this brewery, which goes all the way back to 1890, is a fascinating read so I’ve linked their Wikipedia page and encourage you to check it out. This new campaign featured a handsome, grey-bearded actor named Jonathan Goldsmith who played the title role for almost a decade (ending with him boarding a space ship headed to Mars in 2016). The entire campaign was based around the epic adventures and pearls of wisdom of the man which the narrator, voiced by Will Lyman from Frontline fame, would describe always followed by Goldsmiths character delivering his now famous line, “I don’t always drink beer, But when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.” It would then feature a nod or toast from him and the new brand slogan “Stay thirsty, my friends.” Later in the campaign that last line would sometimes be changed to “Stay thirsty, mis amigos.” It was an wildly popular series leading to over a decade of TV and print ads in addition to hundreds of radio spots all featuring the classic Chuck Norris/Bill Brasky style of setup to further the lore of their new brand spokesman. Here are a few of my personal favorites from the radio series below:

“My words carry weight that would break a less interesting mans jaw”

“I once had an awkward moment, just to see how it feels.”

“If opportunity knocks, and I am not at home, opportunity waits.”

“My pillow is cool on BOTH sides.”

“I once received a standing ovation from a jurors box.”

A Little Info Behind the Initial Campaign

So this campaign was brought to the world by EURO RSCG/NewYork’s Creative Director at the time named Jeff Kling along with Steve Miller from Radical Media as the director. Outside Editorial was tasked with the post work for the first batch of ads. It was widely talked about, achieved a few awards over the years and apparently they had brainstormed over a thousand radio spots before narrowing them down to only the few hundred+ that actually made it on air. When they launched the campaign they also had a website aptly titled staythirstymyfriends.com (now offline) where you could “test your skill in patience and strength” by digitally arm-wrestling Churchill, Stalin, Mao or even the Most Interesting Man himself. It had a bunch of other funny on-brand features like a photo gallery and application for a job as his personal assistant. It was pretty clever, especially for 2006. They would continue on for almost ten years with this campaign until replacing Goldsmith with a much younger French actor named Augustin Legrand. While the campaign had definitely run its course by then, swapping out the actors resulted in another two or so years before we finally heard the last of him. Here was their intro commercial for Legrand, my favorite part was him running through the streets with a supermodel in one hand while cradling a pig wearing a fez hat in the other.

The Reaction From The Public

It’s crazy that this was even talked about so widely as it was back then but some people really seemed to feel like the beer brand had done Goldsmith a disservice by not ending the campaign when they sent him off to Mars. At least that’s what we’d hear on late night television and talk radio shows for weeks following the final commercial. All the drama surrounding the replacement would eventually lead to a series of high-profile interviews where the actor seemed to to just laugh about the whole ordeal and said it was time to move on. Even though he was no longer the official most interesting man in the world that doesn’t mean he’s no longer acting. From the looks of his IMDB page he still gets cameo roles in popular tv dramas, which honestly isn’t that bad of a gig.

So Why Where You Posting TV Ads On Brentter.com?

So at the time this was one of the few independent advertising blogs on the web and being in the industry myself I would spent countless hours in my spare time reaching out to other agencies and production houses with the promise that if they emailed me whatever upcoming campaigns they were working on I would make a post about it. Better yet, if they included the media content as well as the bio/list of those involved, I’d post it in it’s entirety. At the time, listing the entire group of people who worked on any given campaign was somewhat rare, as the advertising agency or just their Creative Director would typically take the credit as a whole. My pitch provided anyone that worked on the project, whether from the production agency that filmed and edited the ad to the copywriter from the ad agency that conceptualized it got credit. It was something they could link to their friends or family that would prove they actually worked on the piece. That ended up working pretty well and the Dos Equis - The Most Interesting Man In The World campaign was one of the emails I received with links to download the first few ads.

So What Happened To The Old Blog?

In those days I would host all the videos at this fairly new startup that featured unlimited storage for streaming videos. Then one day they finally emailed everyone to let us all know they’d been hiding their financial situation and that they were broke. Worse, they had been so late on their hosting bill that all their servers were finally taken offline. All my videos, aka my content, was now offline. That was big learning experience for me in many ways. First, don’t trust only one service to host everything that brings visitors (and money) to your site. Second, if there’s a free tier, that means you’re paying in some other way. If you’re not, then they’re losing in the worst of ways and you might one day find they’ve had their severs repossessed too. Third, always prepare for the worst with backup plans and backed up data.

So Why Revisit The Dos Equis Campaign Now?

With the amount of backlinks I had back then there was always going to be a source that was not actively check their own outgoing links for dead-ends (which everyone should do every now and then). That or the owners of the website had abandoned it or quite frankly could just be too lazy to care. Now I first noticed this the other week when I realized some of the old ad campaign pages were getting a few hits from sources that didn’t seem like they were bots. The only problem was they were all getting a 404 page because none of those links actually still exist. This post isn’t just a cheap seo hit-job though. If I wanted that I’d put the whole site back online. Back when I was writing all those articles I really did love the industry and still have a soft spot for creative marketing. In order to send any future visitors to the correct new URLs I set up a 301 redirect to this page and for the other links it will send them to my homepage. Backlinks and 301 redirects, still going strong all these years. If you are interested in learning a little bit more about how easy 301 redirects are to setup and what they can (or sometimes can’t) do for you in terms of boosting your website SEO, I actually wrote a post about it when I noticed all the old traffic. Check it out if you’re curious.

Until next time, Stay Thirsty My Friends.
~Brent