When temperatures began to rise in BA last November, one local brewer, Isenbeck, covered the City with billboards promising the ultimate fantasy for beer lovers seeking respite from the calor bonaerense: A chance to swim in beer.

Ultimately, according to Advertising Age, the marketing event was canned by government officials who feared “the Pileta de Cerveza ad campaign and the plunge into a pool brimming with brew would encourage irresponsible drinking.”

The government may have thrown cold water on the Beer Pool, but the competition is just now heating up among brewers in BA and the region in general. First, Heineken outbids SABMiller for FEMSA’s beer business to gain much-needed Latin American exposure, then Chile’s Kunstmann (part owned by CCU, the second-largest player in Argentina) announces a regional expansion, and finally speculation surfaces that Anheuser-Busch InBev may increase its ownership stake of Grupo Modelo.

After so many M&A’s, the Latin Business Chronicle says “Scarce Targets” remain in the region: “To acquire volumes in Latin America potential acquirers would now have to look at smaller players that only have operations in one country.” Several of these cervejas artesanais are located in neighboring Brazil where A-B InBev rules, but Schincariol is gaining market share both at home and in Argentina.

Now with the World Cup only six months away, the Latin beer battle moves from the boardroom to the TV with every major brewer vying for top-of-mind association with each country’s national team. (A-B InBev’s Quilmes set the bar extremely high with this 2006 epic.) Winning that battle to reach 26.29 billion viewers in 214 countries would be something unforgettable…kind of like swimming in beer.

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