How Coors Light turned a damaged billboard into a viral campaign

If it ain't broken, don’t fix it.

But if it is broken, turn it into a beer can and make a viral marketing campaign. Or however the saying goes.

When Angels player Shohei Ohtani broke the Coors Light billboard during an Angels vs. Mets game, the moment instantly went viral.

The hit left a black square of dead pixels in the upper left corner of the image of the Coors beer can. But what Coors Light did next is one of the cleverest campaigns in the brand’s history.

Baseball is one of the world’s biggest sports.

That’s why brands spend millions of dollars to be official sponsors of the widely popular game.

Bud Light is the official beer of Major League Baseball. And they also happen to be Coors' biggest competition.

So when Ohtani struck a long foul ball into the stands, damaging their ad, Coors knew they had an opportunity that wouldn’t come again. An opportunity to become the unofficial beer of the MLB.

Agency Rethink immediately put pen to paper, or image to social media, and replicated the broken ad as a new can design on X.

Above the image, the copy read, 'Hits the spot.'

'It all felt too serendipitous to ignore,' Aaron Starkman, chief creative officer at Rethink, told Ad Age. 'The odds of one of the greatest baseball players of all time not only hitting a Coors Light ad but hitting it directly on the can was a rare opportunity.'

The post, captioned 'Looks like we got a new can design thanks to the best player in baseball. Thoughts?' received a huge fan response. The post garnered 1.3 million views and thousands of comments calling for Coors to design a can in memory of the moment.

Ask and you shall receive.

In just 48 hours, Coors Light announced they would create a limited edition can with the black square. These cans sold out in under 24 hours as fans clamoured to purchase a 'piece of Coors Light baseball history.'

The brand continued the campaign, adding the same black square to existing Coors Light ads. This included wildpostings and OOH in the Anaheim area. They also put the image on every single screen of the Angels stadium for when Ohtani returned home.

What can brands learn from Coors’ viral moment?

There are two things Coors Light did really well here:

• Leveraging the now. The Lights Out campaign is a brilliant example of a seizing an opportunity. Waiting too long would have rendered the opportunity irrelevant. Coors’ reactivity allowed them to feed into the hype of the moment and leverage it for their own success.

• Appealing to a fan base. Turning their product into commemorative merchandise made Coors Light an integral part of the baseball fan experience. So much so, that they even had demand coming from Japan, Ohtani’s home country, wanting to get their hands on one of the iconic cans.

My takeaway from this campaign?

Blink and you’ll miss it. Timing is everything.

-Sophie, Copywriter