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Why ShockTop's "greatest SuperBowl ad ever" was a failure

8/4/2016

 
Summertime is generally a hot time for selling beer, but a slow time for beer-advertising news. There's not that much to do in the marketing departments since their summer advertising was committed to in the early spring. So brand managers can go on vacation. Major changes in direction can wait until after Labor Day. It's too early to tell how this season's ads have worked--or failed--in the marketplace.

​Except when it isn't.
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Adweek, February 8, 2016
Just a few short months ago, ShockTop spent an estimated $5 million on its self-proclaimed "greatest SuperBowl ad of all time." The commercial featured T.J. Miller exchanging conversational barbs with a talking tap handle.
The ad was followed up with the release of an extended video of the two characters reviewing other brands' ads post-game, a "hilarious" Superbowl ad review, according to Adweek. "This really is long-form bonus Super Bowl content at its best," gushed the trade publication. 

AdvertisingAge gave the ShockTop ad three out of four stars in its SuperBowl ad review saying it had "dialogue worth listening to and a tone just right for the target audience."


Northwestern University's Kellogg graduate business school even weighed in, rating the ad highly and concluding "... it will boost sales, which is what a SuperBowl spot is supposed to do."

We were skeptics. Before the full ad appeared, we worried that viewers might only get some funny schtick, not an effective ad. 

Well, the definitive answer just arrived...
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Advertising Age, August 3, 2016
As we put it in our post-SuperBowl review, "not selling the brand's distinctiveness was a lost opportunity." Sadly, we've seen this costly mistake many times before. It's what happens when ad agencies and their gullible clients conspire to create ads long on humor, celebrities and entertainment value, but short--in this case, dreadfully short--on selling the brand's distinctiveness. As our review noted, ShockTop's distinctive "unfiltered" feature appeared only as a very minor afterthought at the end of its ad. All the drama was empty entertainment unrelated to the beer. So the creators got exactly what they wanted. And the brand got zilch.

The very same could be said of the BudLight "Party" campaign currently running.

We can only hope the Bud Light brand guys are being called back from their vacations.

Update
Sales trend as of August 17, 2016 from Beer Marketer's Insights: "Shock Top franchise down 18.5% for last 4 weeks, 13% YTD"

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    The Author

    Dan Fox is a real beer guy.

    For more than half his 30-year career at ad agency, Foote, Cone & Belding, he ran the Coors Brewing account. Leading a group of dozens of advertising professionals, Dan also personally wrote the Pete Coors "Somewhere near Golden, Colorado" commercials, designed the Coors NASCAR graphics, authored sales-convention speeches, and most important of all, formulated marketing strategy for virtually every Coors brand, including Coors Light, Keystone, Killian's Irish Red and more. His proudest achievement? "Our team had every Coors brand growing at once."

    Over his advertising career, Dan was personally involved in the analysis, planning and creation of thousands of ads for a variety of products and services. By way of this blog, he freely shares his expertise about what works, and what doesn't, when it comes to selling beer.

    If you're in the beer-marketing business--or just interested in the subject--you may want to read what "HeyBeerDan" has to say.

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