The model is plugging the initiative with an advert from Wieden+Kennedy New York that exhibits a lady treating herself with a beer after a sweaty run.
Ultra has lengthy pushed the low-cal beer as a reward for athletic pursuits, relationship again to the times when its advertisements featured cyclist Lance Armstrong living the “Ultra Life,” earlier than his doping downfall. But in latest weeks, Ultra has been met on the jogging path by Molson Coors, which has made fitness-related pitches a key a part of its marketing campaign for the brand new Coors Pure, quite a lot of brew marketed as USDA-certified natural.
Chicago-based Molson Coors debuted Pure final month with a advertising stunt that asked drinkers to go for a jog by following their own beer-shaped route. The brew gave away $15 pay as you go Mastercards for anybody who submitted a screenshot of their route captured through a working app. The marketing campaign was called “Beer Run,” much like Ultra’s. That was adopted up with advertisements that broke earlier this month from Droga5 that stars comic Ali Wong as a speaking beer can praising drinkers for partaking in frequent athletic pursuits comparable to going for a motorbike experience or a run.
The new fitness-inspired advertising from the nation’s two largest brewers makes use of the type of work-reward tactic lengthy deployed by beer manufacturers. Remember the testosterone-fueled “Head for the Mountains of Busch” marketing campaign from many years in the past that confirmed steer-wrestling cowboys ending their day in a bar?
These days, manufacturers should be much more gender-neutral, and likewise feed into extra trendy pastimes, together with jogging and yoga. Cowboys are out; cat-cow poses are in.
Balancing indulgence with wellness
Young individuals “are actually balancing indulgence with well being and wellness,” says Duane Stanford, editor and writer of Beverage Digest. “They are completely keen to exit and drink on a weekend evening, after which actually eat nicely the remainder of the week. So they’re banking their energy … there is a chance for beer firms to say, ‘let me be the model that you simply indulge with,’ but in addition we’re going to offer you a workable indulgence as a result of we’re going to lower the energy, lower the carbs and offer you taste.”
There is one other pattern behind the brand new beer campaigns—the necessity to meet individuals the place they’re: With bars nonetheless slowly reopening amid the pandemic, the working packages are a strategy to transfer experiential advertising out of indoor watering holes and into the outside.
“As the world begins to soundly reopen, Michelob Ultra’s Beer Run seems to be ahead to individuals being lively collectively and rewarding them for doing so with a refreshing beer after a run or exercise,” Ricardo Marques, VP of promoting for Ultra, mentioned in a press release.
The new marketing campaign has one other purpose—which is to pump AB InBev’s loyalty program. To get the pay as you go $5 playing cards, contributors should enroll on the brewer’s “MyCooler” app, which debuted in early 2020 and permits shoppers to earn swag in trade for consenting to having the brewer use private info for digital product and advertising focusing on. The brewer has more and more plugged the app in its advertising, together with as a automobile to enter Bud Light’s “Summery Stimmy,” which gives away some $10 million with of prizes, including sports tickets.
The brewer is amongst a host of marketers putting more emphasis on these types of loyalty programs in preparation for a cookie-less future through which first-party information is turning into extra essential.
Alissa Heinerscheid, VP of direct-to-consumer advertising for AB InBev, in a press release to Ad Age mentioned MyCooler was “constructed across the perception that buyers need to have interaction with content material, merchandise, and e-commerce throughout our full portfolio of manufacturers. Through this system, we’re constructing deep connections between shoppers and our manufacturers by providing personalised content material and distinctive, compelling experiences and merchandise.”
E.J. Schultz writes for Crain’s sister publication Ad Age.
