This is the third part of the series “choosing the right media for the right occasion”. In this part, we will be looking at the tapas day, that disappeared. This case actually does use the right media, but lacks some in the execution. It has a couple of years on it’s back, but I still think the points are valid, so here we go.

San Miguel Tapas Day CPH – The event that disappeared

First of all I really like tapas and when it comes with a cold San Miguel (or preferably a good red vine) it is one of my favorite food categories. Therefore I off course clicked the little sponsored advertisements on Facebook inviting me to the San Miguel Tapas day and I read with enthusiasm, that the coming weekend where announced San Miguel Tapas day and you would get a tapas dish with every San Miguel beer you buy.

I was just about to invite some friends to visit a couple of bars to have a beer or two accompanied by tapas, but (there was bound to be one)  when I tried to find out which bars supported I was very surprised – It didn’t seem to be possible to find the participating bars. The fan page was inviting me to find the nearest establishment, but it seemed I wasn’t the only one having trouble to find out where to go:

There were a lot of activity on the wall and people generally seemed to be positive about the event, but in both Danish and Spanish people kept asking where and when they could participate. There were very little communication from San Miguel and it seemed that the very little there was, was either standardized advertisement for their tapas application or performed in Spanish.

In all fairness I have to say that it looked like a few of the people posting on the wall had found a place to find the information (although not sharing it) and it might have been on their campaign page (it’s been taken down now). But when I tried to enter the page I got this message:

The page was browser optimized and apparently didn’t support my browser version yet (one day before the event!!), by then it was not tapas and beer, that was on my mind, but rather an irritating feeling, that something as simple as easily letting the target group know how and where to buy the product completely had slipped the mind of the creators of the activity.

Digging a bit further into this event I realized, that it was a cross border event, that took place in various cities and it seemed like San Miguel probably “was killed” by their own success and lacking the resources to do the proper communication to each of the target markets and therefore unfortunately failing.

I actually quite like the idea of making an international tapas day and combining it with a brand – it gives value to the brand and gives the possibility of making an annual event, that can last for several years like it has been done in Denmark with Tuborg Christmas brew (site changes with seasons, so you might get lucky to discover other danish beer traditions like Easter brew on the site:-)) . I also like, that you try and engage the participants by making apps where you can create your own tapas (unfortunately taken down now – it did have a lot of good recipes as well :-))  and taking the events to the local cafes absolutely makes sense. What I really don’t like is when you put lots resources and effort in a campaign and forget the absolute basic – Where do I get the product – so… close, but no cigar and well thought, but some lack in execution.