You don’t need to be a cord cutter to have attempted to illegally stream a professional sports event. With all the various nights of network, primetime, cable televised events, you’re bound to have realized you don’t get ESPN on Spectrum or TNT on Hulu. Miller Lite recently took advantage of an EXTREMELY unique opportunity of advertising that we just had to talk about for this edition of Effective Design Discussion, or EDD.
Streaming Games in 2020
You’ve tried it. Picking up that MMA fight on a stream. Maybe you don’t get NFL Network before they started airing Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime. The bottom line is, people have at least tried, or failed to stream a sporting event through their device. Miller Lite knew this, so in a splurge of creativity they came up with an artificial streaming link that would take users from where they thought they were going, which was a stream to a Primetime NFL game, and ended up getting this message.
Genius ROI Strategy
Now, Miller did not slight on budget for production of the video ad itself. The 3 minute rabbit-hole of the americana-parody’s trip down football TV memory lane takes the user on a trippy journey back in time, while pitching the real star of the product– the CANTENNA. Amidst the artificial (now defunct) Hank Williams Jr. ripoff and realistically-bad streaming glitching, was the ultimate prize, the simple-yet functional Miller Lite Beer Cantenna.
The Cantenna will prevent you from needing to stream the game illegally-and become a loser who’s friends’ don’t trust them and deserve jail time. Allegedly, the can of beer-turned antenna actually works.
Comedic Genius
The story of the ad does not stop quickly, it takes the journey so far that the poor guy in the commercial gets arrested and goes to jail for his illegal pirating of the fictional football game.
The best part of the ad campaign, in our opinion.. the most genius and innovative part, is this ad cost nothing to run on network or cable TV.
What an incredible usage of YouTube video to put an embedded message on a landing page, where the user is going to be, when they are going to be there.
Timing is Everything
The “false” website led viewers who were looking for a new functional website for their stream, but it was proactive placement at it’s finest. This wasn’t the only installation of the CANTENNA ad campaign. We’ve also seen a few display ads here or there, and also heard it mentioned on podcasts like the Ryen Rusillo Podcast the Ringer Podcast Network. What does this tell us?
Sure it’s cool that someone invented a damn full can of beer that helps you view every NFL game…but…
What’s really cool for us advertising nerds is seeing the ingenuity of video production and good old fashioned comedy, mixed with the creativity and innovation of new-style ad placement. The timing and placement of the ad, the level of production, and the concept in general is something this marketing team won’t ever forget.
Miller Lite may not be your brand, they may not have the same intentions that your brand has–admittedly. What they do have however is the money to be able to play with, something that smaller companies don’t have either.
Using creativity, ingenuity of products like Google & Facebook & SnapChat, we can get your brand in front of EXACTLY who needs to see it, and EXACTLY when they need to see it!