Coors Light Goes All In to Bring Chill Vibes to Canadian Super Bowl Viewers
If we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that Canadians love the Big Game just as much as Americans do, with Super Bowl LVII ranking as Canada’s most-watched broadcast of the 2023/2024 season to date! But there’s one thing that’s always missing on game day in Canada: the iconic commercials. Due to regulatory guidelines in Canada, American ads often don’t make it to Canadian airwaves. Coors Light decided this year would be different for their fans. For the first time, the beer brand produced a bespoke Big Game ad that was broadcast across Canada during the Big Game on February 11.
After a record year as the top-selling light beer in Canada, investing in a bespoke Big Game ad was the ultimate opportunity to engage directly with consumers during a pivotal cultural moment across North America. The brand pulled out all the stops with a full-scale integrated campaign in Canada to engage Canadian fans and make sure they weren’t iced out of the Big Game and its big brand fanfare this year.
“Fueling the brands’ momentum, we knew this was the perfect time to bring the Chill Train out of retirement”, noted Leslie Malcolm, Vice President of Marketing, Canada, Molson Coors.
And so, after 12 long years, the iconic Coors Light Chill Train made its triumphant return, travelling straight from the Rockies, bringing good vibes and chill from coast to coast. Recognizing that Canadians deserved an immersive subzero spectacle, Coors Light extended the Chill Train experience beyond televisions. It made its rounds across Canada leading up to the Big Game, leaving a frozen wake and trail of precious cargo, stopping at experiential pop-ups in Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto. The pop-ups offered consumers the opportunity to directly interact with the brand, the chance to enter to win epic prizes, and build anticipation for the brand’s debut on sport’s biggest stage. “We acknowledge that experiences outside of just investing in an advertisement are more important than ever,” said Malcolm, “The pop-up activations were a great way to directly interact with our consumer, generate anticipation, and ultimately contribute to the recipe to win the Big Game in the market”.
The advertisement itself features the Chill Train’s journey, which aims to refresh the spirit during the game’s heated moments, a nod to the brand’s commitment to delivering chill, appealing to a wide audience. It reintroduces the Chill Train to those who fondly remember it as the iconic Silver Bullet Train, and captures the attention of the new generation of beer drinkers.
The agencies behind the Coors Light Chill Train campaign include Citizen Relations, taking care of PR, creative, strategy, and experiential with Volt behind owned social, Droga5 creating the ad spot and Wavemaker driving the paid media strategy and execution.
As the brand looks beyond the Big Game, its emphasis on ‘chill’ remains. Canadians will be seeing a lot more of Coors Light throughout the year, and fans can expect the Chill Train to continue to deliver good vibes and refreshment from coast to coast.
