CORONA EXTRA | LUNA CORONA | 2014
They Worked with Astronomers Until the Moon Became a Slice of Lime / CORONA EXTRA "LUNA CORONA"
A crescent moon floating above a New York rooftop looks, on one specific night, exactly like a lime wedge stuck in a Corona bottle. It's not a coincidence—it's the result of careful calculations involving astronomers.
The problem
Corona Extra had a strong image as a beer you drink on the beach during the day. How to break that daytime-only image was the homework assigned to the agency Cramer-Krasselt.
The insight
The idea came from wondering if people in New York could find their own personal beach even at night. That led to the concept of making a crescent moon look like a lime wedged into a Corona bottle. Bringing a daytime beer out into the night is a simple idea, but pulling it off required some serious calculation.
The idea
They put up a single billboard showing a Corona bottle at the corner of 9th Avenue and 15th Street in Manhattan. With help from astronomers and a planetarium, they worked out the exact date, time, and location where a crescent moon would appear to overlap the bottle's opening like a lime. On the nights of 6/14 and 6/15, 2013, anyone looking up from that specific spot saw the real moon transformed into a slice of lime.
What happened
The phenomenon happened as planned in New York on 6/14 and 6/15, 2013. The YouTube video was viewed more than 140,000 times, and the campaign earned over 5,000 likes on Facebook. Corona's sales volume in New York reportedly rose about 8% compared to the same period the previous year. The campaign won Gold and Silver at the Cannes Lions in 2014.
Afterthought
What's amazing is that instead of touching up a picture on a billboard, they got the real moon in the sky to work with them. And they didn't just guess "it'll probably look about right from here"—they actually teamed up with a university and did the orbital math properly. It's the day advertising hijacked a natural phenomenon.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2014
