London International Awards
2022 Winners and Finalists
Regional Network of the Year: North America
FCB
Bronze
TV/Cinema
Innovative Use of TV/Cinema
Entrant: | FCB New York, New York |
Brand: | ABInBev mike's Hard Lemonade |
Title: | "mike's in a Beer World" |
Corporate Name of Client: | ABInBev mike's Hard Lemonade |
Head of Future Beverages: | Gabriela Gallo |
Global Vice President, Beyond Beer, Craft and Specialties: | Thiago Zanettini |
Head of Global Brand Marketing: | Caitlin Partridge |
Head of Mike´s Hard Lemonade, Brazil: | Annelise Alves |
Mike´s Hard Lemonade Marketing, Brazil: | Guilherme Poyares |
Mike´s Hard Lemonade Marketing in Brazil: | Eugenia Zagallo |
Health, Wellness & Adjacencies Brand Manager, ABInBev, mike’s Hard Lemonade, Colombia: | Sara Donado |
Agency: | FCB New York, New York |
Agency Chief Executive Officers: | Gabriel Schmitt/Michael Aimette |
Worldwide Chief Creative Officer: | Danilo Boer |
Chief Creative Officer: | Ricardo John |
Executive Creative Directors: | Samira Ansari/Anna Martha/Marcelo Rizerio |
Creative Directors: | Alexandre Abrantes/Pedro Araujo |
Copywriters: | Chloe Bayhack/Alexandre Vasquez |
Senior Art Directors: | Waner Almeida/Lara Polovina |
Art Director: | Fernanda Yoshimura |
Agency Content Supervisors: | Carolina Venancio/João Paulo Cardoso |
Agency Project Manager: | Abby Kiefer |
Agency Chief Strategy Officer: | Renata D´Avila |
Agency Strategic Planner: | Michael Schonfeld |
Agency Strategy Directors: | Jamie Rutherford/James Friedman/Gustavo Zilles |
Strategy Manager, FCB Brazil: | Rodrigo Almeida |
Agency Account Executive: | Priscila Silva |
Agency Account Supervisors: | Sean Kittredge/Logan Butler |
Agency Group Account Directors: | Megan Bundy/Amy Elkins |
Agency Account Directors: | Ashley Read/Jack Lodge/Elton Longhi |
Agency Account Manager: | Tássia Massumi |
Music Production Company: | JSM Music, New York |
Description:
Challenger brands attack their competitors. But mike’s Hard Lemonade is inclusive and didn’t want to pick a fight. It wanted to join the party.
So instead of fighting South America’s biggest beer brands, mike’s partnered with them, by putting someone drinking mike’s in their ads. mike’s then shot its own ads on the sets of those beer ads, but from the mike’s drinker’s POV. The hard lemonade and beer commercials ran back-to-back.
Naturally, mike’s also brought hard lemonade everywhere beer went: events, social media, film, out-of-home, radio, e-commerce, and point-of-sale.
The campaign generated over 438 million impressions in Brazil and Colombia, and achieved the #1 sentiment score of any AB InBev brand in Colombia. In Colombia, the campaign generated a 213% increase in weekly mentions. At events like Colombian St. Patrick’s Day, people even created a new consumption occasion: They mixed mike’s into their beers.
Winning during beer occasions skyrocketed mike’s year-over-year growth. Before 2022, retailers sold mike’s in stores, but the brand hadn’t invested in a major marketing launch.
The campaign made an outsized impact: 1,625% sales growth in Colombia 192% sales growth in Brazil 93% sales growth incremental to beer sales in Brazil and Colombia $4:$1 return-on-marketing-investment
And growing sales also meant outselling other Ready-to-Drink brands. mike’s outsold Smirnoff Ice, its biggest RTD competitor in Brazil, for the first time.