Light beer on Draft(Kings)
The "limbic capitalism" of Molson Coors' Super Bowl sports-betting gambit
Last month, Molson Coors announced its ad strategy for the triumphant return to the Super Bowl it’s been plotting since scooping up a spot this summer—its first after more than three decades of being boxed out by longtime rival Anheuser-Busch/InBev. It was kinda underwhelming! Rather than buying a national in-game broadcast ad apiece for each of its heavy-hitting light beers, Miller Lite and Coors Light, the macrobrewer said it would make the brands “compete” for a single spot1 that would also be cobranded with the sports-betting platform DraftKings. I thought that approach was a baffling Big Game re-debut for the country’s No. 2 beverage conglomerate, and I wrote as much at VinePair the other week.
But whatever, beer companies do weird shit for the Super Bowl all the time, right? (Looking at you, Sam Adams!) Breaking through the noise requires unorthodox gambits, and internal marketing teams and external agencies are both keen to notch resume-padding “firsts” on the largest advertising stage in the world.2 After filing my column, I didn’t plan to write/think about the “High Stakes Beer Ad” again, but a few days later the company revealed new details about that aforementioned DraftKings tie-in that cast the campaign in a whole new light—and not a particularly flattering one at that.