Corona is one of Mexico’s most famous brands. Aside from being a well-established brand in the country, the company sells its products in more than 180 countries all over the world.  The refreshing-beer brand boasts a long heritage, one that isn’t so popular among craft-beer lovers. Yet, the brand wants to make its history heard from one corner of the world to the other, so, in partnership with creative agency Observatory, the beer maker launched an elaborate stop-motion video which presents the audience with Corona’s  roots, that are nicely entwined with Mexico’s history.

To give a voice to the stop-motion film, the Los-Angeles-based agency chose Gael García Bernal’s calm and elegant voice to reveal the “History of ‘La Cerveza Mas Fina’.” In just 60 seconds, the Mexican actor introduces us to the relationship Corona has developed with Mexican citizens since its beginnings in 1925. The fully-animated ad contains four chapters, which describe prominent events that happened in the Central American country.

Shortly after the Revolution, Corona was founded by a group of bakers. They decided to use the brand’s now popular clear-glass bottle so that anyone could notice that the beer was made with the finest ingredients available on the market. Afterwards, during the golden age of Mexican cinema, the Corona Caravan brought culture and little Coronas invaded every corner of the country.

In the 1980s, during the big economic crisis, Corona began an ambitious export program, which proved to help the Mexican producer conquer the rest of the world. Lastly, we get a glimpse of how present-day Mexicans have learned from their ancestors to turn obstacles into opportunities, while tearing down both physical and mental barriers. “History says that we are made of the finest, and the finest never stops,” García Bernal elegantly announces in the one-minute-long video.

To let the campaign evolve nicely, the creatives draw inspiration from the label that’s embedded onto every Corona bottle: La Cerveza Mas Fina. “La Mas Fina means quality and craft. So everything we did in our campaign had to have the same craft as our beer,” explains Clarissa Pantoja, Director at Corona, in a press release.

The inspiration for the historical world comes from the works of renowned Mexican surrealist artist Pedro Friedeberg. The film was directed by Nicolas Ménard and produced and animated by London/LA based Nexus Studios.

“Corona’s story is a tale that reflects the spirit of the Mexican people,” says Todd Hunter, Co-Chief Creative Officer at Observatory. “To tell it, we were inspired by a medium that has captured Mexican history for centuries, its art, and brought it to life through a beautiful stop-motion film.”

Nearly 130 people were involved in making the project that needed about two months to come to life. It required 24 images per second to finalize to the complex visual experience, which was meticulously filled with handcrafted sets and figures.

The characters were molded by the artists at Nexus studio, then 3D-printed and hand-painted by Andy Gent’s team at Arch Model Studio. Together they produced 421 handmade miniatures, of which 71 represented characters in the commercial. To see how the creative process behind the interesting video unfolded, have a look at the Behind-the-Scenes video below.

Credits:

Client: Corona

Agency: Observatory