NYT: Corona Extra, the best-selling imported beer in America, is buying big twin signs on 1600 Broadway, the new 27-story building at 48th Street owned by Sherwood Equities. The signs, which are scheduled to go up on Monday, each measure about 92 feet high by 35 feet wide and show open bottles of Corona with limes wedged into the necks.
The signs will face south, toward the big Budweiser sign attached to 1 Times Square, the southern anchor of the district.
“We feel the ads in Times Square will bring a lot of benefits,” said Roberto Viejo, chief sales and marketing officer at Procermex in San Antonio, “not just for the New York market but for the world market.”
Corona Extra is distributed in 150 countries, Mr. Viejo said, so the visibility the signs will derive from being at the so-called crossroad of the world will help build the brand’s image internationally as well as in America.
Taking so prominent a place “is another way of saying it’s our time to come in and say we’re a player” in the global beer business, he added.
While the Corona Extra signs are big, they are not quite in the category of Times Square billboards known as spectaculars because they are made of flex-face vinyl panels that are backlighted rather than embedded with neon or other special lighting like the nearby signs for Wrigley, Budweiser and other advertisers.
