Clever Campaign Turns Blackened Ballpark LED Display Into Marketing Gold
May 9, 2024 by Dave Haynes
Here’s a video that sums up a very clever campaign for Coors Light beer that was built around a Major League Baseball hitting a long foul ball that took out an LED module of one of the ad boards at the ballpark last year.
Angels player Shohei Ohtani drilled one into the stands at Citi Field, knocking out a square of LEDs that were display an ad for the beer, creating a black square just above the Coors logo on the can.
Some very sharp copywriter at the Canadian ad agency Rethink, which does work for Molson Coors, saw an opportunity rather than a problem. In short order, a Lights Out campaign was built around the dead pixels on the board, including billboard ads that built in the black square and even a commemorative can that included the blotch.
The campaign went viral and even resulted in demand in the Japanese market (Ohtani comes from that country) to start selling Coors Light in the land of Sapporo, Asahi and Kirin.
Just…wow!
That is awesome!