Mondays, Am I Right? How Coors Light Turned a Gaffe into an Opportunity – Maybe

As the Super Bowl approaches, advertisers are pulling out all the stops to get their products seen by shoppers. After all, the Big Game is the top ad seller of the year, and beer is also big business that weekend, with 325.5 gallons of beer consumed (the equivalent of a whopping 50 million cases of beer).

Fortunately or unfortunately for Coors Light, the team planning their ad buy leading up to that second Sunday in February made a slight error this week. Or did they?

As their news release stated:

“This morning, we released a series of ads leading up to the Big Game intended to make the most refreshing beer in the world look even colder, and we're aware that they didn't have our signature chill. In the ads that were released everywhere, there was an unfortunate misspelling of "Mountain Cold Refreshment" as "Mountain Cold Refershment." 

Coors Light wants to thank everyone for letting us know about the errors.

Very chill of you. Mondays, am I right?

Refershment…

Three simple words, right? This news release definitely made me chuckle — what a clever way to address a blunder! But it also left me with questions:

• How many people reviewed this copy before distribution?

• Was it created in-house or through an agency?

• Are the ads still in circulation?

• Did the ad lead keep their job?

• Just how big was this campaign? (I found that their news release ran in at least four different U.S. markets, so my guess is BIG)

• Was this accidental or intentional?

Was it on Purpose?

Recently, I was on a check-in call with my client Tom Newmaster of FORCEpkg. Tom is a great client; he’s acerbic, interesting, witty, smart, outspoken, and very talented. Many times, our check-in calls meander to trends and topics permeating our inboxes.

On this particular call, we reminisced about an article he participated in following the Bud Light controversy from last spring, and the recent judgment error Tropicana made when it updated its packaging (aka Shrinkflation).

This led Tom to ask, “so, when do we talk about the possibility that Coors did this on purpose?”

Interestingly, I first heard of this gaffe while listening to a popular morning radio show. They were laughing about it, commenting that they were amused by how it was handled, and that this simple mistake led to increased mentions of their brand, which, of course, is a good thing.

With this in mind, was it on purpose? Are intentional marketing errors a thing?

Accidental or Intentional Marketing

It should be noted that when I started writing this blog, I made up the term “intentional marketing mistakes,” as it seemed to fit the Coors Light scenario. However, a simple Google search determined that I am not the first person to use this term.

In a piece titled, “How Advertisers Can Benefit from Intentional Mistakes,” LIM Marketing comments: “Mistakes done right can actually be beneficial to the advertisers and the brand. Using mistakes strategically can serve to bring more people to the brand and make the brand more successful in the long run. These mistakes give the brand an opportunity to communicate back to their audience, fixing their mistake and restating their value for high-quality communication.”

Further:

• Mistakes Create Inside Jokes: With advertising, if you misspell a word in a particularly funny manner, that is something that not many will forget. This small communication between the audience and brand becomes an inside joke. This makes customers feel that they are a part of something and are connected to the brand.

  
  

• Mistakes Humanize Brands: Mistakes remind people that the individuals working at these brands are humans just like them. It infers that they have a connection to the brand and the act of making, acknowledging, and fixing mistakes builds trust.

  
  

• Acknowledged Mistakes Break the Wall: Humanizing mistakes also give brands the chance to break their professional wall and communicate right to their customers. This further helps brands avoid being seen as robots who only want customers’ money.

While mistakes are common enough in the world of marketing, I believe there are two categories of errors that stand out: simple human error (such as this Coors Light example) and the more egregious error of not doing the homework to know your audience.

Homework Leads to Success with Brands

Last spring, Tom was asked to participate in an interview about the aforementioned damaging mistake made by Bud Light. As you may recall, Bud Light partnered with a transgender influencer, which caused consumer backlash, a boycott on Bud Light, and billions lost in market cap. While it was agreed that they were trying to do a good thing, Bud Light drinkers didn’t like it. As Tom stated in the piece:

“If Bud Light came to me, I would have pushed them to supply firm research that demonstrated that this packaging wouldn’t fail. A few thousand dollars spent to test packaging with consumers could have potentially stopped it from running, or made the whole campaign smarter.”

So, small errors — whether intentional or simple human error — can come off as funny when handled well. Egregious errors, such as the reference to Bud Light or Tropicana’s shrinkflation, can be financially damaging. In either reference, had they done their homework and asked their shoppers their opinion, they would have discovered that they were missing the mark, saving themselves from huge mistakes.

I do have to comment that all my years in PR trained me to be very careful about mistakes. Typos in emails to clients were a huge mistake. Errors on news releases and other published work cost jobs. Has this practice gone to the wayside? Are we all just working too quickly, and should probably just slow down?

Either way, it definitely behooves brands to tread slowly and carefully to avoid mistakes that can negatively affect their bottom line.

Unless they make those mistakes on purpose…