Kahlúa® Partners with Food Network Star, Aarón Sánchez, to Launch a Bad Branding Campaign

I’m bemused over the Kahlúa®/Aarón Sánchez press release I read this morning. Maybe the Kahlúa marketing team threw the campaign together at 3am New Year’s morning, after too many Kahlúa shots? They’re doing a terrible job masquerading their “Delicioso Night In” marketing campaign as an intro to a fabricated Mexican tradition. I’m all for trying out new trends, but the last time I checked, the residents of Mexico – specifically Veracruz – didn’t have a tradition of inviting family, friends and co-workers over for Kahlúa® once a month. In fact, I’m fairly sure that entertaining company in one’s home in Mexico isn’t saved for special occasions, but practiced regularly as a way of life – no?

Moreover, Kahlúa® is referring to their “Delicioso Night In” campaign as a “movement”. Aside from suggesting that consumers invite friends over one night a month (which most of us do anyway), there isn’t anything I can find that would brand their campaign a “movement”. I can understand the “equal rights movement” or the “anti-slavery movement”, but the “share a bottle of Kahlúa with friends movement” just doesn’t seem to have the same ring of authenticity.

In addition to the “Kahlúa movement”, they’re holding a “Delicioso Night In” sweepstakes. Apparently, all you need to do is invite a few friends to your house once a month. But the sweepstakes just seems like a cheap way of collecting contact info from consumers – note the lack of privacy policy in the registration form. Consumers beware: your prize for entering the sweepstakes will most likely be A LOT of spam and not much else.

My favorite part of the sweepstakes rules: “In the event that the Aarón Sánchez dinner portion of the prize is not available, cancelled or postponed due to circumstances beyond Sponsor's control, that portion of the prize will not be awarded and no additional compensation will be provided.” Let’s hope that Sánchez feels like entertaining strangers when that “portion of the prize” is awarded.

To summarize: Kahlúa® gets personal contact information from thousands of unsuspecting consumers (which they can later remarket to or sell to a third party) and Chef Aarón Sánchez gets some press - all for a fraction of the cost of other marketing techniques.

In my meager opinion, this is an exploitation of Mexican culture and a cheap tactic to collect personal information from consumers and spam them at a later date.