Toronto’s Taxi 2 has unveiled its first ad campaign for Moosehead since replacing Sid Lee as the St. John, NB-based independent brewer’s agency of record late last year.
The new “Outlast” campaign is built around a 60-second anthem spot and a 30-second cut down, which are being complemented by social media and targeted digital and out-of-home advertising in Moosehead’s lead market of Ontario.
Toronto-based Wills & Co. Media Strategies executed the media buy for the eight-week campaign, the TV component of which emphasizes national sports TV.
Deanna Kaminskyj, senior director of marketing for Moosehead, said the campaign was aimed at increasing top-of-mind awareness of Moosehead and helping consumers feel more connected to the brand as it approaches its 150th anniversary in 2017.
“We have a very unique and rich history and a story that many Canadians are still unaware of,” said Kaminskyj. “The campaign is designed to bring more of an emotional connection to our story and connect with consumers around the platform of resilience.”
Kaminskyj said previous brand efforts, such as 2012’s “To All Things Made Well,” focused on a “functional message” of quality, taste and craftsmanship,” but the brand wanted to change direction approaching its sesquicentennial.
“Many Canadians don’t know that Moosehead is independent and family owned and that we are turning 150 next year,” said Kaminskyj. “The change in direction was really to start telling the story and linking it back to Moosehead’s core DNA of overcoming adversity time and time again and encouraging consumers to do the same.”
The bulls-eye target for Moosehead is 25 to 39-year-old down-to-earth males, said Kaminskyj. Research has found Moosehead was also an occasion-based brand based on the outdoors and cottage life, though she said the company was keen to expand that scope.
The anthem spot features numerous variations on the word “out” (outwork, out-will, out-do, out of your element, out of time, out of the woods) before the spot concludes with the voiceover “And only then…outlast” accompanied by images of Moosehead and the caption “Moosehead. Since 1867.”
“The great thing is that we didn’t have to look far for the story,” said Taxi 2’s group account director Haneen Davies. “We were drawn to resilience because it was fundamental to Moosehead and the more we explored it the more we came to realize that the struggle to do things differently is something everybody faces.”
Kaminskyj said there was a “very common” misconception among Canadian beer-drinkers that Moosehead is owned by one of the major brewing conglomerates. “It’s a time of amalgamation and acquisitions in the beer industry, so we believe being independent and using ‘Outlast’ as our creative can speak to a space that Moosehead can own 100%,” she said.
Canadian beer sales have remain relatively flat over the past decade, with a 2015 report from Statistics Canada noting beer sales as a share of total beverage alcohol sales tumbled from 49% in 2004-05 to 42% in 2013-14.
The average annual growth rate for the previous 10 years was just 1.5% (including just 0.9% growth for Canadian beer sales, compared with 5.5% growth for import sales).
