Modelo has launched its largest college football investment to date with a new brand platform, backed by an 18% year over year media increase. The bigger story is what it dropped: the brand character it built the last two seasons around.
What happened
- The platform is called “It’s Not Just Game Day. It’s Tradition.” and is timed to the 2026-27 season.
- It runs across three brand spots, with media partnerships covering Fox, ESPN and Barstool Sports.
- Channels span social, digital, sportsbook, rideshare, delivery and broadcast.
- A Homefield tie-up adds co-branded merchandise, activations and content.
What got cut
- The Recruiter, the brand character introduced in 2024 and central to the 2025 “Full-Time Fans” campaign, is gone.
- That 2025 campaign carried a 20% media increase. This year’s carries 18%.
- Modelo spent two seasons building a character and has now walked away from it.
- The replacement idea is fan tradition, which is borrowed from the category rather than owned by the brand.
The creative
- “Same Time, Next Year” follows two friends on opposite sides of the Michigan and Ohio State rivalry.
- “Texting” shows a father and daughter messaging during an Oregon game.
- “Taste of the Tailgate” puts the product into game day cooking.
- All three lean on ritual and repetition rather than product claims.
The commercial backdrop
- Modelo Especial depletions fell around 2% in the quarter ending 30 June, contributing to a 0.3% company wide decline at Constellation Brands.
- CEO Nicholas Fink told analysts unaided awareness for the brand remains remarkably low.
- Modelo Especial leads on dollar sales while Michelob Ultra leads on volume.
- Sports is the chosen route to close that awareness gap.
The spending pattern
- College football media up 18% this season.
- College basketball ad spend up 48% in 2025.
- US pro soccer spend up 125% ahead of the World Cup.
- Modelo is not testing sports. It is compounding into it every season.
What brands should take from this
- Two years is not long enough to build a brand character, then abandon it.
- Every reset restarts the memory curve. The audience does not carry your equity forward for you.
- Low unaided awareness is a distinctiveness problem, and spending more on borrowed cultural moments rarely fixes it.
- If you cannot name what your brand owns after a campaign ends, the campaign rented attention.
Our view
- Modelo is buying occasions, not building assets. Tradition belongs to college football, not to Modelo.
- The spend increases across football, basketball and soccer suggest reach is being treated as the answer to an awareness problem.
- The Barstool and Homefield deals are the smart part. They create repeatable content and merchandise that outlive a season.
- Watch whether depletions respond. If a third consecutive spend hike does not move volume, the creative idea is the issue, not the budget.
