North American brewing giant Molson Coors is returning to the NFL’s Super Bowl for the first time in decades and has begun teasing its Big Game marketing by igniting a ‘refreshment versus great taste’ debate over which of its two leading brands – Coors Light or Miller Lite – will feature in the joint Canadian/US company’s first Big Game commercial in 30 years.
A full-page ad in the New York Times kicked off the sibling beer brand battle: the execution featuring a single can of each beer side-by-side alongside a pair of copy lines making the case for each – “The big game hasn’t tasted this great in 30 years” and “The big game hasn’t been this refreshing in 30 years”.
The campaign then evolved as both brands make their case of the USA’s prime advertising real estate on the 12 February Super Bowl through a billboard brawl in each brand’s birthplace: one flagship poster appeared in Golden (Colorado) making the case for Coors Light, while another was erected in Miller’s home town of Milwaukee. The outdoor strand was then amplified across social and digital media.
The campaign is being developed with agency Droga5, while Publicis Connect is running the media plan and in-house Volt Studio is handling social media.
The campaign also includes a Big Game list-building voucher strand.
After Miller Lite and Coors Light had duked it out for weeks in the pre-gaame phase and fans nationwide tried to predict the outcome of this first-of-its-kind beer campaign, the climax of the campaign was a Super Bowl commercial in which to the pair instigated a high-octane, ablletic bar battle. Which brand prevailed in the end? Well, in an unexpected twist, it was actually follow stablemate Blue Moon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E91tRQvjWKA
In the end, more than 250,000 people particapted in the ‘Molson Coors’ High Stakes Beer Ad Pool’ on DraftKings as they sought to have their own say and to scoop hard cash by predicted everything from the bartender’s clothing (leather jacket) to whether the Coors Light Silver Bullet Train would make a cameo.
“Figuring out which brand or brands is no simple task,” explained Molson Coors Chief Marketing Officer Michelle St Jacques (declining the reveal the winner). “It’s not just that Molson Coors hasn’t been in the big game in 30 years. Neither have Miller Lite or Coors Light. And when you look at the momentum we have with our premium lights right now, there’s a really good argument for either one to be featured in the Super Bowl.”
St Jacques adds that the spot itself will be “full of firsts for us as a company and for the Super Bowl itself” and explains the opportunity to get back in the Super Bowl as not only an opportunity for whichever brand is featured but also as a point of pride for Molson Coors and its network of distributors.
Comment
This campaign sees Molson Coors stoke excitement for its Super Bowl return by leaning in to internal rivalry (remember when NFL partner PepsiCo previously ran a tongue-in-cheek activation pitting Mtn Dew against Doritos?).
2023 sees brewer Molson Coors return to the Super Bowl after more than 30 years of exclusivity for rival and NFL partner Anheuser-Busch. Non ABInBev brands have been effectively locked out of advertising in the Big game since 1989 when the now Belgium owned and St Louis based company bought exclusive beer category ad rights for the Super Bowl.
The Super Bowl is the USA’s most-watched live annual TV broadcast annually – averaging more than 100 million viewers – and it is also the biggest beer-selling occasion of the year outside the summer.
Both brands have a reasonable business claim.
Coors Light is Molson Coors’ top-selling beer in the USA and the No2 seller in the country over all, plus it has a strong American Football heritage and its ‘Made to Chill’ marketing platform has shown some success.
While Miller Lite has performed strongly in recent times with a growing share of the US beer market through 2022 and also has well established NFL team partnerships.
Of course, during that 33-year period plenty of unofficial brewing brands have come up with alternative ways (from digital to local) to leverage the Big Game without buying official broadcaster ad space – ranging from Miller Lite’s ‘Ridiculously Long Calorie-Burning URL’, Miller 64’s ‘World’s Dumbest Math Problem’ and Coors Light’s ‘Big Game Dream’.
Indeed, the rise of digital, local and regional ad buys were cited by Anheuser-Busch Chief Marketing Officer Benoit Garbe as pone part of the reason the company opted to relinquish its exclusivity in 2023. “We realized the Super Bowl was not really exclusive anymore,” said Garbe on 9 January at an industry summit in Florida.
Despite no longer having Super Bowl exclusivity, ABInBev will still lead its alcohol and beer competitors in terms of ad space with three minutes of in-game national commercial time spanning four commercials. These will include spots for Bud Light, a golf-themed Michelob Ultra ad seemingly inspired by the cult comedy film ‘Caddyshack’, plus a spot for Busch Light (with Budweiser only reported to run regional buys).
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