A Mexican Soft Drink Tries to Step Outside Its Niche

JARRITOS, a Mexican soft drink popular among Hispanics in the United States, is introducing new advertising to win over non-Hispanic young men in the hope that they will spread the brand’s message even farther.

The campaign, which began rolling out in stages on Sept. 6, focuses primarily on the Los Angeles market, where Jarritos has commissioned three murals and is doing consumer sampling. The brand also has a new Web site, Jarritos.com, and is advertising on Pandora, the Internet radio service, and elsewhere online.

All initiatives of the campaign — which is by GSD&M, an agency based in Austin, Tex., that has previously done work for Coca-Cola and RC Cola and is part of the Omnicom Group — are aimed at 18- to 24-year-old, non-Hispanic, trend-setting males.

Jarritos is made with granulated natural sugar — not high-fructose corn syrup as are many mass-market soft drinks — and is sold in glass bottles at grocery and convenience stores, as well as some Super Target and Wal-Mart stores, in the United States. It comes in 11 flavors, including guava, tamarind and mango. READ MORE