Making movies on location out here
Labatt Breweries of Canada charted new territory this year with programs for its Budweiser and Kokanee brands that went beyond traditional beer advertising to engage consumers in fun, creative and inventive ways.
With its fiercest competitor Molson now holding the official NHL rights, Labatt went looking for ways to connect with hockey-loving beer drinkers. “Budweiser Red Lights”—a wifi enabled replica hockey goal light available at Budweiser.ca for $149—firmly attached the Bud brand to the most important moment of any game: when the user’s favourite team scored. Talk about thinking outside the bottle.
“Too often marketers think of innovation only as a new liquid or a new way to unscrew a bottle cap,” says Kyle Norrington, marketing director for Budweiser in Toronto. “And I think the Budweiser Red Light is a great example of us thinking about innovative ways to connect to our customers.”
• Labatt introduced “Budweiser Red Lights” with a 60-second television commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. A 30-second version also ran. The campaign generated 80 million media impressions and achieved 57% ad awareness. Budweiser experienced a record quarter in brand consideration and weekly consumption increased by 17% in February/March versus the year before. The idea was extended to Calgary later in the year, when fans at a Flames game got special Budweiser Red Light hats to light up when the home team scored.
• For its Kokanee brand, Labatt took branded entertainment to the next level with the beer label’s crazy cast of familiar characters in a feature movie. Labatt called on consumers to submit ideas for props and bar locations to appear in what eventually became a 90-minute flick called The Movie Out Here. It won’t win Oscars, but it won fan approval and lots of advertising awards. In Vancouver The Movie Out Here ranked 4th out of 12 movies on opening weekend, surpassing Oscar contenders Lincoln and Les Misérables.
• Brand health scores surpassed target by 21%. Fan acquisition and fan engagement metrics exceeded expectations by 152% and 3,163%, respectively. During the week of release, the movie’s IMDB rank was in the top 1% of more than 1.8 million titles on the site.
You can find out who will be named our Marketer of the Year on Jan. 29 at our Best of 2013 cocktail party. Want to attend? Lots of important people will be there. Visit us online for more information.
