It’s only been six months since beer brand Dos Equis parted ways with “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” but he’s back now for a new series of television ads featuring a younger lead actor who is actually fluent in Spanish.
Actor Augustin Legrand is taking over the role of “The Most Interesting Man in the World” months after the 77-year-old American Jonathan Goldsmith bowed out of the role he played for nearly a decade in TV commercials and other promotional spots for the Heineken-owned beer brand. (Fortune interviewed Goldsmith in March for a look back at his long run as the popular character.) The 41-year-old Legrand—who was born in France but speaks both English and Spanish, according to USA Today—appears in a video uploaded to Dos Equis’ YouTube account on Wednesday teasing the updated campaign.
The 34-second teaser ad finds Legrand at a quiet dive bar where an old television plays snippets from an earlier Dos Equis ad featuring Goldsmith’s “Most Interesting Man,” as a bartender asks, “Think anyone will ever be as interesting as him?” Cue a montage of quick clips showing Legrand’s character performing such “interesting” tasks as chopping a coconut in half with his bare hand and emerging from a rocket ship. The camera then cuts back to the bar, where Legrand smiles, shrugs and replies “It’s hard to say.” The entire conversation is in Spanish. The ad then displays the text: “His legend begins. October 2016.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KqjvM7r2xY
It was reported earlier this year that Heineken executives planned to take the famous Dos Equis ad campaign in a new direction, but the specifics of Legrand’s casting weren’t publicly known until now. Andrew Katz, Dos Equis’ vice president of marketing, told USA Today the brand is “trying to reach a new audience” and that an emphasis is being placed on “Spanish-dominant consumers.” Dos Equis was originally brewed in Mexico by a German brewer and its name means “two X’s” in Spanish. As Fortune has reported, Mexican products have performed increasingly well in the $100 billion U.S. beer market, especially as more companies direct their marketing efforts toward this country’s growing Hispanic population.
With Legrand now in the ad campaign’s lead role, television viewers will soon be seeing “The Most Interesting Man in the World” during commercial breaks in between college football games this fall, as Dos Equis has signed a multi-year sponsorship deal with the College Football Playoff. The first full ads with Legrand in the new campaign, which has been created by ad company Havas Worldwide, will launch on October 19, according to Advertising Age.
