US brewer Sam Adams promoted its non-alcoholic IPA ahead of NCAA March Madness through a high-tech electronic insulated beer can sleeve via a campaign which reminds users to sensibly pace their basketball-watching beer-drinking sessions by sometimes switching to non-alcoholic beer.
The brand, which is marketed by Boston Beer, recently introduced its ‘Just the Haze’ non-alcoholic India pale ale and promoted the product through a campaign based around a rechargeable ‘Insulating Pacing Apparatus’ (or IPA) which has built-in motion sensors, a vibration system and LED lights that activate after every second beer to act as a reminder to switch to a non-alcoholic beer.
Samuel Adams is thus asking drinkers to register at its ‘Pace with Taste’ microsite by 19 March – the start of the NCAA March Madness college hoops tournament – in order to be in with a chance to win one of the electronic beer sleeves.
In anticipation of sports fans engaging in marathon watching sessions after missing last year’s tournament, Samuel Adams’s campaign and beer sleeve are designed to show how non-alcoholic beers can fit into any drinking occasion.
The aim is to ensure the brand stands out from its competitor crowd by introducing novelty device to reinforce the idea that college basketball fans can enjoy long hoops watching sessions by switching back and forth between alcoholic and non-alcoholic brews.
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The campaign is timed to roll out at the start of March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament which runs between 18 March and 9 April (after being cancelled in 2020 for the first time in its 80-plus-year history due to Covid-19).
The college basketball tournament generated $910m in ad spend in 2019 (according to Kantar Media) and many of the marketers leveraging the property are extremely loya: in fact, 23 official advertisers during the 2019 tournament had advertised in the tournament every year during that last decade.
This initiative also acts as another sign that sports-related promotions are returning to a more expected seasonal schedule following 12 months of pandemic-driven cancelations and postponements of US college and professional sports.
It also continues the low- and non-alcoholic beer marketing strategy of activating around sports events: a trend which leverages the demand from younger consumers to seek healthier alternatives to alcoholic brews.
Recent examples of this trend have included Budweiser Zero’s athlete ambassador led ‘Team Zero’ campaign, Peroni Libera 00.0%’s ‘The Passion Inside‘ activation of its partnership with the Aston Martin Cognizant F1 team and Heineken’s work with Formula One itself.
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