Coors Brewing Co. has been especially busy with its Coors Light lately, and the company’s reasoning for this — not to mention the timing with which it has unveiled its most recent developments for the brand — simply couldn’t be better.
    Just as bar guests nationwide are patronizing patios and becoming thirstier all the while, and temperatures have risen along with a night’s heat on the dance floor, beer is back — and it’s gotten better.

Creating Ideas
    “How do we deliver non-stop, cold refreshment?” was the question posed at Coors some months ago, says Jim Sabia, the company’s vice president of marketing. He and his colleagues at Coors then went to work on the answers.
    Coors’ new “Taste the Cold” initiative has been multi-layered. Among other innovations the company has recently rolled out beginning this summer season, there is the new Stay Cold Glassware, a fresh, exclusive dual-pane take on the traditional, single-pane beer glass. The added layer to the glass increases insulation, helping to protect beer from the heat of a drinker’s hand. Beer poured at 35 degrees Fahrenheit into a regular pint glass at room temperature will warm to more than 45 degrees after the drinker holds the glass for 20 minutes. Beer poured into the hand-blown Coors Light Stay Cold Glassware, however, as the company’s tests have indicated, still will be at a refreshing 38 degrees after 20 minutes. Now, Coors’ tagline of “Taste the Cold” begins to come into focus.

Continuing the Innovations
    Bolstering the movement to assuage bar guests with the essence of cold, Coors Light’s second brand innovation, the Cold Wrap Bottle, is a fun combination of science and imagery.
    The Bottle has a 360-degree label with Outlast technology to keep beer colder longer, again, by isolating the heat of a consumer’s hand. Outlast Technologies, based in Boulder, Colo., designs and markets temperature-regulating phase change materials — originally developed for space travel to protect astronauts against the extreme temperature changes they experience when in orbit. The Outlast Thermocules that are built into Coors’ Cold Wraps actually absorb some of the heat from a hand, helping to keep beer colder, longer — by design. It’s all in the name of helping patrons receive the coldest product possible and helping operators enjoy serious revenue this summer.
    “Rocky Mountain cold refreshment is the essence of the Coors Light brand,” Sabia says. “These innovations ensure our consumers can ‘Taste the Cold’ and be refreshed this summer, whether they’re at a nightclub dancing or at a barbecue with friends.”

See the Light
    Why not have a barbecue at the nightclub? With summer promotions in full swing, the possibilities for tying in to the Coors Light brand’s multi-faceted on-premise cold campaign are wide open and moving with the speed of a Silver Bullet, with off-premise efforts underway also.
        As the beer category asserts itself for renewed growth, the vigor behind these Coors Light campaigns should go a long way in reminding on-premise consumers not to come in from the cold, but to gravitate toward it. NCB