Marketing in The News: Miller Beer Drops

     

Light beer, a common punching bag in alcohol space. I can’t count the number of times I've heard bud light referred to as “piss water”, or just the common association of frat guys choking down can after can of “natty light” because it's cheap and gets you drunk.

    I chose Miller Lite’s new ad campaign as my topic because I feel that though I do enjoy the occasional beer, I have never considered Miller Lite as an option. I am interested in seeing what sort of ideas the company has come up with to create new customers such as myself.

    In their article “Miller Lite emphasizes taste with beer flavor drops” Marketing Dive goes into Miller Lite's brand new product Beer Drops, a limited edition flavor enhancer for whatever light beer you might be drinking that isn't Miller. The ad which is to be featured during the NCAA Championships as well as distributed all over social media, has a light hearted feel to it, poking fun at the competition by calling into question their taste and emphasizing Miller's own. The apparent motivation behind this ad is to fight the common held belief that Miller Beer doesn’t taste very good.

Miller’s value proposition in this ad is a light beer that can actually back itself up with flavor. In such an overcrowded segment in the adult beverages, it’s become extremely important for Miller to set themselves apart. Light beer tends to come with the preconceived idea that it is a compromise between having a good tasting beer and not having a lot of calories, and compromised flavor can rarely be made a selling point.

The target audience for this ad seems to be basketball fans and young adults, judging by their use of ads during the NCAA Championships and on social media. Within that demographic, I think that they are appealing to the early adopters of Miller Lite Beer by providing them with a product that they may be able to use as a gag with their friends, possibly even convincing them to switch over through the power of Miller flavor enhancement in their favorite light beer. A fun way to increase buyer participation and perhaps create polarization in a fairly apathetic market.

This is a fairly unique approach to marketing a beer and it seems to have been fairly successful. I say this because if you check the Miller Lite website the drops are entirely sold out, including the restock that happened on April 9th. 

Although the advertisement was successful It seems very gimmicky and doesn’t solve the possible underlying problem, Miller Lite may just not taste that good. A company as old and as popular as Miller shouldn't have the preconceived notion of bad taste if it wasn’t there in the first place. Another issue that comes up is the segment's movement towards a whole new type of product all together. In an apparent ploy to sustain the “authenticity” of Miller Lite beer, they have entirely neglected to move in on the hard seltzer market, unlike many of their competitors who have had great success in the segment.