High up in the Rockies, you'll find a fine marketing strategy

MEDIA & MARKETING: When Coors Light launched in Ireland its very 'lightness' repelled males – not any more

THE POWER of advertising in influencing consumers is vividly illustrated by the beer brand Coors Light, which was an also-ran for many years after its launch in Ireland in 1997 but is now the bestselling bottled lager in pubs.

That’s some achievement when you consider the head start Heineken, Carlsberg and Budweiser had in drinkers’ affections before Coors Light came along. So how has the upstart brand managed to elbow its rivals aside without competing on price? Good advertising strategy and execution would seem to be the answer.

Dublin advertising agency Chemistry took charge of Coors Light in 2005. At that time, the brand was massive in the United States but in Ireland young men had disdain for “light” beer. Most Coors consumers were women.

The agency’s challenge was to connect with the target market of 18-34-year-old men on an emotional level while not alienating the female base.

Account director Niamh O’Dea explains: “This target audience is difficult to reach and to engage. They are conspicuous consumers and employ brands as badges with which to define themselves.

“Their choice of beer brand also reflects on them and calling for a ‘girly beer’ implies a lack of discernment. If they think it’s a beer targeted at women, young male consumers will simply not engage at all.”

A complex mix of sentiments influence beer brand choice among different demographics but the bedrock of any large brand is of “real” beer credentials. Then there is the brand call. When standing at a bar, people order beer by brand name, not by category.

O’Dea says: “To do that, consumers have to be assured not just that the brand will meet their personal quality criteria, but that it will be widely understood by others as a credible choice. This issue is more acute for our target audience of younger men, as for them their choice of beer is as important for what it says about them as how it tastes.”

The ‘bullseye consumer’ for Coors Light is a 23-year-old man, a first jobber. This person may consider himself a free-thinking individual but, to the marketing professionals, he is a consumer waiting to be manipulated. From Coors’s perspective, this young man is perceived as follows: “Entry into the world of work is a period of redefinition. Within this, weekends take on a new significance and his beer brand must meet his need for release, for new experiences and for spontaneity which are now restricted.

“At this period of flux, when our consumer is mixing with different age groups, he will use brands as tools with which he redefines himself on different occasions. In all cases Coors Light must be a credible and relevant choice.” To persuade this bullseye that it’s cool to call for a Coors, Chemistry firstly undertook two years of advertising to establish the brand’s “authority”.

The theme was centred on Adolph Coors locating his brewery in the Rocky Mountains in America because of the mountain spring water he found there. In real life, Coors bought an abandoned tannery in the bustling Colorado town of Golden and converted it to a brew house.

Still, the advertising fantasy with its steam engines and wilderness settings did the trick. One quote from Chemistry’s consumer tracking research was as follows: “Lots of beers go on about tradition – it reassures you about their years of experience. I like to know about the little place where it started, how it grew up, the usual nonsense. It’s damn important.”

Not included in that initial advertising campaign was the story of Adolph’s suicide in 1929, when he jumped to his death from a hotel window.

Having established credibility for Coors Light, in 2007 Chemistry started developing “affinity” for the brand. The creative idea was clever leveraging of the brand “heritage”, with a campaign theme of “Amazing things happen high in the Rockies”.

“For this consumer, money is less important than real experience. What he values most cannot be bought.”

The TV commercial executions on this theme have been variations on men behaving badly in the snow, and they seem to have been well received.

As the beer market generally has declined over the past five years, Coors Light volumes have grown by 25 per cent. In overall terms, the brand is still niche but unlike some rivals it’s still gaining share. In O’Dea’s view, the success of Coors Light demonstrates the correlation between investment in advertising and growth in volume sales and market share. “There is a causal relationship between the two and the cornerstone of this relationship is the brand.”