Make Up Your Own Cinco de Mayo?! No Way, Jose!

Nearly every night before I crash out, I go through my routine “I swear this is the last one” late night social media scroll. On one of those recent nights, I came across a Jose Cuervo Facebook post that began with the following text: “Don’t know what #CincoDeMayo is actually about?”

I quickly got over my issue regarding sentences that end with prepositions and thought, “Wow! Kudos to Jose Cuervo for taking on this topic!” Yeah, well, not so fast. As I continued to read the rest of the copy, my elation quickly turned to frustration: ”Join the club and make something up. Submit it in the comments and we’ll paint your historically inaccurate version on a mural in #LosAngeles. If you win we’ll even give you a piece of the mural.”

::insert eyeroll emoji here::

Really, Cuervo? Really?! One of the most iconic Mexican brands in the world with an existence that spans more than 200 years and this is how you choose to “build awareness” of Cinco de Mayo?

The number of companies wanting to cash in on the holiday seems to grow steadily each year. It’s been happening since the 1980s and the good ol’ adult beverage industry is mostly to blame. Every time the holiday rolls around, there are a handful of stories about some of these bonehead moves that have backfired.

Last year, “Good Morning America” issued an apology after one of their hosts announced that “Cinco de Drinko” was the biggest day of the year for margarita sales as she cheered with a margarita while wearing, of course, a sombrero.

A few years back, alcohol brand Mike’s Hard Lemonade decided to celebrate with a promo which encouraged social media users to submit their ideas for a song and the company’s “improv mariachi band” would sing them... their not-so-Mexican “improv Mariachi band”. Plus, for some reason, they promoted it as “Cuatro de Mayo”. Hmm, no potential backlash here.

It’s now 2015 and the trend continues. Taco Bell has decided to push their new biscuit taco cochinada today. We’ll let you check out the link for all the, umm, details. Convenience store chain Stripes chose to promote itself with the holiday via a “Cinco de Monkey” promotion. Yeah… we don’t know, either.

We’re sure there are tons of other similarly cringe-worthy promotions out there but we’re not up to finding every single one of them. While going through a #CincoDeMayo hashtag search on Facebook, we also found a lot of the typical party related posts – food ideas, DIY party themes, where to celebrate with the best Mexican food, etc. However, there were quite a few posts promoting celebrations that actually pertained to the holiday itself or shared links where social media users could learn more about the holiday.

While doing additional research, I was pleased to find an article about somewhat beer newcomer Montejo that explained why they’re passing on the whole Cinco de Mayo craze. Maybe there’s hope after all! 

As an advertising professional, I understand where these companies are coming from to a certain extent. However, more times than not it seems like they receive more bad than good reactions to their promotion. So why keep doing it? Maybe the attention itself is worth it? After all, as they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

What are your thoughts? Are people justified in getting upset about the treatment of the holiday? Or are they over-reacting? Everyone has an opinion, that’s for sure. However, the next time I have one and need to mull it over with a cold adult beverage, chances are I’ll do so with a Montejo beer before shooting some Cuervo.

Today will undoubtedly be filled with revelry made up of Mexican based beverages, comida mexicana and guacamole. Lotsa' guacamole. If you’ll be one of those individuals caught up in the madness, I won’t judge you. Just do me a favor and learn a bit of the history before you get your Drinko on. ¡Gracias!