Fancy a free lemonade? It’s possible with Corona…
For the US launch of its Hard Seltzer Limonada range, the Mexican beer brand has partnered with the language-learning site Duolingo to provide the consumer with an educational and refreshing experience!
The fact
Proud of its origins, Corona launches Limonada, a range inspired by the traditional flavors of Mexican lemonade. Want to taste it? Just walk up to the vending machine voice-activated on the Las Vegas Strip to request a free sample. How? Saying out loud and intelligible this simple phrase “dame una Corona Hard Seltzer Limonada, por favor.” »
But be careful to care about your pronunciation. For the record, in Spanish limonada is pronounced lee-moh-naa-da. If you haven’t been paying attention in class or your Spanish is rusty, you might not win a free drink, but a month of language lessons on the Duolingo site; just to practice and be able to quickly try your luck again.
Decoding
With this promotional operation, Corona plays on its Mexican roots, the brand wishes to show authenticity in order to differentiate itself from its competitors.
However, it is very clearly the pleasure that immediately emerges from this operation. By playing the card of the consumption engine Experience, the beer brand hopes to recruit new consumers seduced by the originality of the mechanism. In the middle of summer, it’s easy to imagine queuing in front of the vending machine to try to get a free drink. At a time when points of sale are suffering from a significant reduction in their flow of customers, gaming remains an important lever for bringing consumers back to the store. “pleasure” purchases. Why keep going to the store when the internet allows me to purchase a product effortlessly? The now key role of delivery in the purchase journey is explained by this awareness. However, From North Face in South Korea at Audi in Norway while going through McDonalds in the Netherlands, this frantic search for fun and experience(s) is not new. It was at the heart of innovation before the pandemic. There is no doubt that in the face of the current difficulties of physical commerce, it will undoubtedly make a comeback in the coming months.
Similarly, the Corona operation is also interesting because it illustrates the increasingly important role played by platforms. At the end of the confinements, we saw many brand corners, shop-in-shops flourish. Here, two different worlds, a drink and a freemium learning site, come together. With more than 500 million users, Duolingo represents a very significant recruitment potential for the beer brand. Hence the idea of offering with the promo code LIMONADA one month of free access to the premium site to all those who wish it. By leaving its historic distribution channel, Corona is also testing the potential impact of audience platforms, the weight of which continues to grow.
