CASE STUDY

Miller Lite – Driving purchase consideration among Latino beer drinkers by promoting authenticity and one's own unique style.

Role

Lead Designer

Timeline

5 months (July - Nov 2021)

Responsibilities

Led design team of 2: Research, Strategy, Ideation, Design, Implementation

2+ PTS

Increase in sales amongst Latino drinkers

88%

Lift in sales when product was on display

CONTEXT

Setting the stage

In June 2021, our fellow Molson Coors' agency Alma was working on a huge 2-year partnership between Miller Lite and reggaeton superstar J Balvin. The hope for this celebrity collaboration was to make Miller Lite more relevant with Latino beer drinkers, a market segment that the brand was struggling with against competitors. As Molson Coors' commerce agency, our job was to develop a campaign for the partnership that would drive purchase consideration and sales at retailers and bars nationwide.

However, there was a slight issue: by the time our team was kicked off in July, the partnership was not yet finalized.

As a result, all we knew about the partnership and Alma’s national campaign was that:

It will feature custom J Balvin packaging
We needed to leverage Alma’s visual treatment (still TBD)
There might be a sweepstakes

Nevertheless, to meet our production deadline in 3 weeks so the campaign could launch in early September (7 weeks away), we needed to begin work immediately.

Is celeb-inspired packaging and merch enough to establish a lasting connection between our target audience and Miller Lite?

CHALLENGE

Play it by ear

As our entire team discussed all the unknowns and TBD’s in the brief, a few questions kept coming up:

Beyond business objectives, why should Miller Lite collaborate with J Balvin?
Why should our target audience care about this partnership?

So our creative team decided that we had two tasks to accomplish in order to make this campaign a success:

Task #1: Make the campaign make sense at point-of-sale

This partnership needs a reason to exist that feels authentic to J Balvin and the target audience. Failing in this task could result in the campaign appearing as a shameless cash grab to the Latino Market.

Task #2: Create a reason for consumers to engage

While a custom can design will look cool and fun, new packaging might not be enough to beat the familiar, culturally-preferred taste of Corona or Heineken. Therefore we need to build upon this partnership’s reason to exist so the target audience wants to engage with the campaign and buy Miller Lite.

Molson Coors Clients

External

Associate Marketing Manager
Shopper Marketing Director

Target Audience

External

We focused on engaging with 25-45 year old multicultural Latino drinkers with strong ties to their Latino and American cultural backgrounds.

Retailers & Bar Owners

External

Obtaining prime floor and shelf space at retailers is very competitive, and the same is true of counters and tabletops at bars. So in order to reach our target audience, we would need to convince retailers and bar owners that our campaign would drive sales.

Alma

External

Our partner and lead creative agency for Miller Lite’s Hispanic advertising.

J Balvin

External

As part of his partnership contract–and his schedule permitting–J Balvin and his team would also be reviewing and providing feedback on our work.

Creative Team

Internal

Junior Art Director
Senior Art Director
Creative Director (my partner)
Executive Creative Director

Account Team

Internal

Account Manager
Account Director

Production Team

Internal

Production Designer
Producer

Technology Team

Internal

Developer
Chief Technology Officer

PROCESS

Call the tune

Given our project’s limited brief and constraints, my creative team and I decided to add research and strategy to our usual list of responsibilities; without a strategist of our own, we knew doing so would help ensure our creative work solved our client’s problems, laddered up to Alma’s partnership and own campaign strategy, and resonated with our target audience.

Note: In advertising, the ideation and design phases are typically conducted simultaneously. This is both due to time constraints as well as one phase informing the other.

PROCESS / RESEARCH

Hit the right note

Before we could come up with ideas, we needed to establish a strategic foundation for our campaign concepts. So we dove head-first into researching our target audience, J Balvin, and Miller Lite.

Methods

User Discussions

Fortunately, two of my partners on the creative team were members of the target audience, enabling us to have thought-provoking conversations about their experiences, Latino life, self-expression, and of course beer.

Secondary Research

We were fortunate to receive Latino market research and customer segmentation studies and presentations from Alma and Miller Lite. Our analysis uncovered some helpful information about our target audience and the broader Latino market, as well as additional context regarding Miller Lite’s business case for pursuing them and partnering with J Balvin.

Online Research

To observe how our target audience lives and exists online, we reviewed user-generated content on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Despite his megastar status, I was not familiar with J Balvin at all, so I learned as much as I could about him through media interviews, his website and social media content, YouTube videos of past live performances, and his music on Spotify.

Findings

PROCESS / STRATEGY

Hand them the mic

Based on our findings, it was clear that Miller Lite and J Balvin made sense as partners: both value authenticity, self-expression, and bringing people together. These values also strongly resonate with Fusionistas, who are proud of their multi-faceted identities and make everything they do uniquely their own.

Therefore our creative strategy was to leverage these overlapping intrinsic motivators to better communicate and connect with our target audience.

PROCESS / Ideation

Strike a chord

My team and I spent a lot of time brainstorming a range of ideas and gathering inspiration using Miro boards. We then filtered, refined and added visual references to help bring our ideas and presentations to life.

In addition to the internal and external feedback we received throughout concept development, we also had to accommodate new mandatories and information updates stemming from ongoing changes to J Balvin’s partnership and Alma’s own campaign development.

TASK #1

Campaign Concept

Miller Lite already owns “It’s Miller Time.” With J Balvin, they created, “¡Es Jose Time!”
‍
So our team connected the dots, highlighting the fact that J Balvin did with Miller Lite what any self-respecting Fusionista would’ve done: Make “Miller Time” their own. We rallied consumers to do like J Balvin and create their own version of Miller Time.

Beyond buying LTO J Balvin cans, the campaign became a call for Fusionistas to bring their own interpretation to “It’s Miller Time” and get as wild, different, or unique as they wanted.

TASK #2

Campaign Engagement

Our campaign needed to embrace and celebrate Fusionistas’ passion for collaboration and creativity; and to achieve that, words would not be enough.

So to hammer our message home, we would give Fusionista shoppers the ability to digitally customize their own J Balvin-inspired cans to share on social media and for a chance to win J Balvin VIP tickets, prizes, and merch.

This would not only help drive campaign engagement through the purchase of Miller Lite, but also give our target audience a means of creative self-expression through the J Balvin partnership.

PROCESS / DESIGN

Drop the beat

Although I was confident that our concept and activation would resonate with Fusionistas and meet Miller Lite’s business goals, the role of design was more complex. We needed to visually convey the excitement of Miller Lite’s partnership with J Balvin and accommodate evolving campaign directions and stakeholder requirements, while remaining strategic and effective.

Design Audit

Before exploring visual treatments, I conducted an audit of all existing or TBD campaign elements (including content and style) at our disposal.

Worth the exercise (seriously)

The audit was extremely helpful because it highlighted what needed to be created and shed light on how our design treatment/system should function to swiftly accommodate new directions and revisions.

This realization led me to develop a design system utilizing modular components and vibrant color blocking that:

Communicated our campaign’s message effectively and would stand out from Miller Lite’s competitors.

Translated well across touchpoints and formats ranging from retail point-of-sale displays and floor decals to coasters at bars.

Enabled designers to quickly and easily revise our campaign deliverables, saving us time and effort in the process.

Campaign Key Visual

As part of my audit and design exploration, and to make our concept more tangible for our clients, I created print ad-like images that combined our ideas and messaging with a visual treatment to illustrate each concept, which we call key visuals. Below is the final key visual for our campaign.

PROCESS / IMPLEMENTATION

In full swing

Due to this project’s nebulous and limited scope, Design Your Pint–our campaign’s primary means of engagement–was deprioritized in favor of delivering our campaign’s tactile deliverables, which took longer to produce and ship. Therefore our campaign implementation was split into two phases.

Phase I: Point-of-sale

We needed to design and present our campaign's complete tactical plan for final approval and production. Along with developing materials, we rendered them into point-of-sale environments to showcase their visual impact and appeal at businesses, generating excitement among clients.

PLAY TO YOUR (OTHER) AUDIENCE

A polished presentation deck is crucial for Miller Lite's pitches to retailers and bar owners, securing their approval and support to order and display our campaign materials in high-traffic areas.

Retail and convenience stores

To bring our in-store retail displays to life, we worked with a 3D artist to render our designs and help us estimate production costs and required materials.

Bars and restaurants

Bars and restaurants have limited display space and often run promotions from multiple alcohol brands simultaneously, so we focused our efforts on driving engagement through a (very) hardworking two-sided coaster and metal tackers.

Phase II: Design Your Pint

Clients often cancel postponed campaign deliverables due to time, money, or other resource constraints. I hoped Design Your Pint would survive to showcase the value of UX to my team and agency. So when we finally got the green light in late October, I eagerly got to work.

Defining the customer journey

I transformed our proposed experience into a detailed user flow, helping internal stakeholders and vendor PrizeLogic align on the J Balvin sweepstakes experience. This process identified necessary formats, pages, modules, and messages, creating a cohesive narrative for client understanding and feedback from creative, legal, development, and promotional perspectives.

Getting stakeholder buy-in

Just as we needed key visuals to sell our clients on our campaign, I also needed to visualize Design Your Pint. Since most of our stakeholders were not familiar with developing this kind of digital engagement, I had to translate our high-level experience overview into a comprehensive and high-fidelity presentation as quickly as possible. This was done in parallel while consulting our development team to ensure the engagement was feasible and under budget.

View experience proposal

Swan song...

I was in the process of leaving the agency when Design Your Pint was finally briefed, so my involvement with its development regrettably ended here. Fortunately, a colleague was kind enough to send me a deck with the final designs.

View final designs

RESULTS

Rock the house

Our campaign with J Balvin strengthened Miller Lite's relationship with Latino drinkers by generating excitement and engagement, as well as sales.

To quote Sarah Irizarry, marketing manager for Miller Lite, in an article on Molson Coors' blog, Beer & Beyond:

“The pints definitely drove excitement and impact, and it’s a great way for our consumers to see, touch, and feel the partnership,” Irizarry says. “We can see it moving the needle and making an impact with Latino consumers. This is a huge opportunity for Miller Lite.”

“We definitely saw support in key markets that over-index in Latino population, but the best part was we saw that display support across the country, not just in markets you’d expect to see it.”

- Sarah Irizarry | Marketing Manager | Miller Lite

2+ PTS

Increase in sales amongst Latino drinkers

88%

Lift in sales when product was on display

REFLECTION

In (and out) of tune

Adapting under pressure

Despite challenging circumstances, our creative team excelled in delivering exceptional work. With minimal information and a tight deadline, we dug deep, devising a strong creative strategy closely aligned with our campaign concepts and target audience. Anticipating numerous revisions, we developed a robust visual treatment based on a flexible design system.

Throughout, our team's camaraderie and resilience were invaluable, ensuring we navigated round after round of revisions with positivity and efficiency. I'm particularly proud of our junior art director's dedication and enthusiasm. While projects like these are demanding, they provide invaluable learning experiences, reinforcing our commitment to delivering quality work.

Navigating timeline turbulence

Initial timeline constraints and escalating expectations strained our collaboration and design process, perpetuating a constant "fire drill" mentality. As the timeline ballooned from 3 weeks to 5 months, friction among stakeholders intensified. This resulted in the delayed launch of the Miller Lite x J Balvin campaign.

The experience underscores the importance of reevaluation amidst evolving deadlines, highlighting the need for a balance between development and time constraints.

Additionally, measuring campaign effectiveness collectively reinforces the team's commitment to continuous improvement. Ultimately, it's about learning from successes and failures to refine our approach for future endeavors, fostering a culture of excellence and growth within the team.

POTENTIAL SOLVE

Post-mortem meetings could help identify best practices and areas for improvement for future projects, review results and feedback, and reaffirm team unity and accountability.