August 20, 2009

Coors Ad Pulled for Wrong Reason

Over the last few days the radio talk shows in BC and Ontario were busy discussing the recent billboard ad by Coors that declared that Coors is ‘Colder than most people from Toronto’. The ad was displayed apparently on 30 billboards throughout the Vancouver area. Some Torontonians picked up on it and complained to Coors who took the ads down forthwith.

The issue in my view is NOT that the ad disturbed the sensitivities of some people from Toronto. It should not have been pulled for that reason.

It should have been pulled - in fact should never have been published - because it was off strategy!

This is a marketing issue not one of positioning folks from the west against people from hog town. The fact of the matter is that Coors has a national market so they need to deal with the traits of people throughout Canada. The choice to poke fun at one region of their overall market doesn’t make any sense at all.

In addition, the use of Toronto in the creative was to describe the ‘cold’ dimension of their product. The creative execution was wrong and I suspect the ad guys were trying to be cute. Why would you choose a geographic region of your market to prove the ‘cold’ image of your product when there was a chance of alienating some of your market? Not a good choice.

The marketing folks need to get control of the ad creative staff who in my experience love to come up with off-the-wall, edgy and controversial ads at times. I have no issue with this as long as strategy is served.

In this case strategy was NOT served! Minus one for the ad guys.

Cheers, Roy Osing

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Posted 8.20.09 at 07:18 am by Roy Osing | Read Comments (0) | Leave a Comment