- Molson Coors CMO Sofia Colucci lays out the strategy behind the company’s Super Bowl ad.
- The “Case of the Mondays” campaign kicked off weeks ahead of the game with a viral stunt.
- It follows a framework the company developed to assess its creative: “MUSCLE.”
Coors Light has been laying the groundwork for its “Case of the Mondays” Super Bowl campaign for weeks — from a viral stunt to chilled face rollers.
The stakes are high for Super Bowl advertisers, some of whom this year are paying over $8 million for 30 seconds of airtime. Coors Light owner Molson Coors hopes to break through by tapping into a simple universal feeling: what it’s like to return to work on Monday after a football-packed Sunday.
The campaign started with a typo. The beer brand misspelled “refreshment” in January ads in The New York Times and in Times Square, saying soon after that it had a “case of the Mondays,” in a nod to the classic “Office Space” line. The campaign, which builds up a TV ad in the game, also includes a branded face roller and Peloton partnership.
Molson Coors CMO Sofia Colucci outlined the company’s Super Bowl creative and marketing approach using an acronym: MUSCLE. It stands for “magnetic,” “unexpected,” “simple,” “crafted brilliantly,” “long term,” and tied to the “essence of the brand.”
Colucci said the company has been using this framework over the last year to evaluate the creative effectiveness of its work. There’s no bigger showcase for it than the big game.
“The Super Bowl isn’t a day, it’s a season,” Colucci told Business Insider. “We’ve gone all in on this big idea of having a ‘case of the Mondays,’ and we wanted to tell one cohesive story to finish, rooted in this insight.”
Coors Light is hoping to flex its ‘MUSCLE’ to connect with consumers
The Super Bowl is typically inundated with beer ads. Molson Coors is putting its Coors Light brand front and center this year. The game will also feature ads from Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, and Stella Artois.
In the stacked lineup, Molson Coors is hoping to stand out by flexing “MUSCLE” to connect with consumers.
The first part — “magnetic” — is all about capturing emotions, Colucci said. Is the advertisement going to make people feel something? Will they laugh or cry? The company is leaning into humor with the Super Bowl campaign. Its TV ad features a slow-moving sloth to capture how people may feel come Monday. Its teaser for the ad features actor and comedian Timothy Simons from “Veep” and “Nobody Wants This.”
“Unexpected” for Molson Coors means the ad is distinctive enough that your friends or family might text you about it. That’s where the typo came in, spelling “refreshment” as “refershment.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Colucci said. “Friends, family, critics on LinkedIn, everyone was reaching out. Some were embarrassed for us. Some actually were thinking I was going to lose my job.”
“Simple” ensures the ad is easy to understand (so simple “you could tell your Uber driver about it,” Colucci said).
The next three letters, C, L, and E, look at the campaign overall. It should be “crafted brilliantly,” meaning that every individual piece is executed well. For the Super Bowl, for example, the campaign culminates in a partnership with Peloton that ties back to a scene in the TV ad with the sloth cycling. The Peloton partnership includes a five-minute meditation and 30-minute ride on Monday.
Long-term connection ties the campaign back to the brand’s main messaging, which, for Coors Light, is “chill.” The company released a Coors Light “Chill Face Roller,” among other ties-ins, aiming to tap into the facial-ice-roller beauty trend. The company told BI the chill rollers sold out in seven minutes on day one and five minutes on day two, and are now selling on eBay.
Molson Coors
“‘Chill’ is our long-term platform,” Colucci said. “And if you think about having a case of the Mondays and being chill about it, it felt so right for Coors Light.”
Lastly, the creative aims to capture the “essence of the brand.” When people think of Coors, does the advertisement connect to what they associate with the company?
