Even on the bleakest and coldest of Chicago days, Sofia Colucci, CMO North America of Molson Coors Beverage Company, is excited to go to work. “It’s the people and the work we get to do,” says Colucci. “We have a culture of putting people first. The collaboration between all of our internal teams and our agency partners is best in class. I sometimes pinch myself to think about the creative work that we get to put out in the world for people to enjoy.” Creative work includes partnering with the iconic TV show Yellowstone for Banquet, creating Super Bowl ads for Coors Light and creating fun products such as dive bar-inspired perfume for Miller High Life. “This all comes from a philosophy for our marketing vision,” explains Colucci. “We want to build more brands that people want to hang out with. Our culture and our philosophy when it comes to marketing is building brands and culture and knowing that it goes beyond traditional television spots. We want to be in the fabric of consumers’ lives and part of the conversation. When we do things like that, we’re also cognizant that it can’t just be something to drive buzz.” Prior to joining Molson Coors over seven years ago, Colucci spent about seven years at PepsiCo and prior to that she spent six years at Maple Leaf Foods. Brand Innovators caught up with Colucci to talk about the Miller High Life Bar Fume, the Yellowstone partnership and building brands that people want to hang out with. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What was the idea behind the Miller Highlight Barfume? Something like the Miller High Life Barfume is funny and unexpected, but at the same time, it really embodies the essence of the brand for Miller High Life. If you think about Miller High Life, it is a dive bar brand, true to its roots. It’s a beer that you can find in a dive bar and we’re really proud of that. We’ve had a lot of fun over the years really owning that. Whether it was our Gingerbread Dive Bar kit or a scented neon tree, we’ve had so many collaborations that really celebrate that. Can you talk about the Yellowstone partnership and how using partnerships helps drive innovation? Yellowstone is another good example of us thinking about our partnerships in ownable ways that make sense for our brands. Coors Banquet has been a mainstay on Yellowstone for years. The characters are seen drinking Banquet in the bunkhouse. The show takes place in Banquet’s backyard, which is the American West. What better partnership for proudly Western beer than the leading Western drama on TV right now? It really unlocks like timely ways for us to connect with drinkers at retail through co-branded displays and executions. It’s also allowed us to have fun with Banquet in culture, doing these kinds of activations. There’s an iconic moment in the show when Beth proposes to Rip, our Banquet product is there. We allowed consumers to experience it themselves with a special Banquet six pack, which had a hidden compartment for their own engagement ring. We help fans recap the show with what we call Banquet recap. It’s a limited time packaging for our stubbies. We have those shorter stubby bottles and we put Yellowstone quotes right under the bottle caps. As we think about these partnerships, it’s what are things that are ownable for us that capture the essence of the brand partnerships that are relevant in culture that can help us attract different consumers and new consumers to our brand. And then also once we have an opportunity to activate different consumer touch points. We really leverage the power of the partnership. We’re heading into Super Bowl season and you’ve already announced that Coors Light will be at the big game. Can you talk about the strategy of being there? We’re really excited for Coors Light to make its third appearance in the big game next year. We’ve officially been in the Super Bowl for the last two years. We’re proud of the different campaigns that we’ve had, whether it was the High Stakes Beer ad in year one and then bringing the Chill Train back in year two. I can’t provide too many details around the next game but what I will tell you is our vision is building brands that more people want to hang out with. And since last year, we’ve brought in a new framework around creative effectiveness for Molson Coors. It’s a way for us to essentially elevate and strengthen the creative that we have. It’s a tool that we call MUSCLE (which is an acronym) framework. MUSCLE stands for: magnetic, unexpected, simple, crafted, connected to a long-term platform and capturing the essence of the brand. It’s a way for our teams to build up their marketing gut. While we definitely deploy and use a lot of insights pre and post launching of work, we also think it’s really important for people to build that creative gut themselves. All the work that we’re going to be launching is in an effort to have it really be strong MUSCLE work. How do you communicate to consumers at the point of sale? If you think about the decision criteria of how people think of consuming beer and really purchasing beer while the traditional above the line is so important, so much of the consumer’s decision is actually happening at the point of purchase when they go to a beer store, a liquor store, a convenience store, a grocery store. Making sure that our brands show up in really meaningful ways is super important to us. As we think about partnering with our retailers, we actually have a big marketing organization and part of it is a function that’s shopper marketing. We partner specifically with them and we make sure that any campaign we have, whether it’s Coors Light, Choose Chill, Miller Lights, Taste Like Miller Time or Banquet. Everything that we do is connected at all of those different touch points. We make sure that we have retail programs with the right point-of-sale or consumer promotions that are then going to get us executed at retail. How have your past experiences at Pepsi and Maple Leaf Foods helped prepare you for this role? I look at every opportunity as a really good learning experience. It’s funny because early in my career, I would have mentors that would say, “Are you learning?” And I’d be like, “What are you talking about? I want to do things. I want to get results.” Now looking back on it, I did learn along the way and it is helping me today. Before Molson Coors, I was at a Canadian food company called Maple Leaf Foods for six and a half years. I was at PepsiCo for about seven and a half years. Every company and every experience was a great learning opportunity. Maple Leaf Foods was an organization that helped me deeply understand the general management and the commercial aspect of marketing. It was very customer driven and the expectation was you really owned and understood all the nuts and bolts of your business from the bill of materials to how product gets out to the shelf to working hand in hand with sales teams. PepsiCo was a great school in terms of branding and innovation. It’s a wonderful organization with a lot of very smart people, a lot of ex consultants. I was able to learn a lot in terms of strategy and building a vision. Then coming to Molson Coors has continued to be a learning experience. I came in first to lead innovation. I was able to bring in a lot of the learnings from PepsiCo and the non-alc world. Now as CMO, I learned from my predecessor Michelle Saint-Jacques in terms of how to think about building brands. We’re continuing to push and elevate that. I have seen this chapter of my journey as a really important one in terms of honing in and becoming a better creative marketer. I keep hearing you say, building brands that people want to hang out with. Can you tell me more about what that means? Branding and positioning are so important in the beer category. What you are holding in your hand really does say so much about who you are as a human being. So this idea of being the brand that people want to hang out with is so important to us because we know that what you’re holding matters. We want to build brands that more people want to hang out with. We want to attract more consumers to our brands, whether it’s existing brands that we have, or if that means creating new brands or thinking about different occasions. This is actually a big reason why we’re evolving from not just beer, but to total beverages. We want to attract new consumers, whether it’s multicultural consumers, or younger, legal drinking age consumers. The idea of growing our category by growing our brands through new consumers is very important to us.

Even on the bleakest and coldest of Chicago days, Sofia Colucci, CMO North America of Molson Coors Beverage Company, is excited to go to work. “It’s the people and the work we get to do,” says Colucci. “We have a culture of putting people first. The collaboration between all of our internal teams and our […]

Even on the bleakest and coldest of Chicago days, Sofia Colucci, CMO North America of Molson Coors Beverage Company, is excited to go to work.

“It’s the people and the work we get to do,” says Colucci. “We have a culture of putting people first. The collaboration between all of our internal teams and our agency partners is best in class. I sometimes pinch myself to think about the creative work that we get to put out in the world for people to enjoy.”

Creative work includes partnering with the iconic TV show Yellowstone for Banquet, creating Super Bowl ads for Coors Light and creating fun products such as dive bar-inspired perfume for Miller High Life.

“This all comes from a philosophy for our marketing vision,” explains Colucci. “We want to build more brands that people want to hang out with. Our culture and our philosophy when it comes to marketing is building brands and culture and knowing that it goes beyond traditional television spots. We want to be in the fabric of consumers’ lives and part of the conversation. When we do things like that, we’re also cognizant that it can’t just be something to drive buzz.”

Prior to joining Molson Coors over seven years ago, Colucci spent about seven years at PepsiCo and prior to that she spent six years at Maple Leaf Foods. Brand Innovators caught up with Colucci to talk about the Miller High Life Bar Fume, the Yellowstone partnership and building brands that people want to hang out with. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was the idea behind the Miller Highlight Barfume?

Something like the Miller High Life Barfume is funny and unexpected, but at the same time, it really embodies the essence of the brand for Miller High Life. If you think about Miller High Life, it is a dive bar brand, true to its roots. It’s a beer that you can find in a dive bar and we’re really proud of that. We’ve had a lot of fun over the years really owning that. Whether it was our Gingerbread Dive Bar kit or a scented neon tree, we’ve had so many collaborations that really celebrate that.

Can you talk about the Yellowstone partnership and how using partnerships helps drive innovation?

Yellowstone is another good example of us thinking about our partnerships in ownable ways that make sense for our brands. Coors Banquet has been a mainstay on Yellowstone for years. The characters are seen drinking Banquet in the bunkhouse. The show takes place in Banquet’s backyard, which is the American West. What better partnership for proudly Western beer than the leading Western drama on TV right now? It really unlocks like timely ways for us to connect with drinkers at retail through co-branded displays and executions. It’s also allowed us to have fun with Banquet in culture, doing these kinds of activations.

There’s an iconic moment in the show when Beth proposes to Rip, our Banquet product is there. We allowed consumers to experience it themselves with a special Banquet six pack, which had a hidden compartment for their own engagement ring. We help fans recap the show with what we call Banquet recap. It’s a limited time packaging for our stubbies. We have those shorter stubby bottles and we put Yellowstone quotes right under the bottle caps.

As we think about these partnerships, it’s what are things that are ownable for us that capture the essence of the brand partnerships that are relevant in culture that can help us attract different consumers and new consumers to our brand. And then also once we have an opportunity to activate different consumer touch points. We really leverage the power of the partnership.

We’re heading into Super Bowl season and you’ve already announced that Coors Light will be at the big game. Can you talk about the strategy of being there?

We’re really excited for Coors Light to make its third appearance in the big game next year. We’ve officially been in the Super Bowl for the last two years. We’re proud of the different campaigns that we’ve had, whether it was the High Stakes Beer ad in year one and then bringing the Chill Train back in year two. I can’t provide too many details around the next game but what I will tell you is our vision is building brands that more people want to hang out with.

And since last year, we’ve brought in a new framework around creative effectiveness for Molson Coors. It’s a way for us to essentially elevate and strengthen the creative that we have. It’s a tool that we call MUSCLE (which is an acronym) framework. MUSCLE stands for: magnetic, unexpected, simple, crafted, connected to a long-term platform and capturing the essence of the brand. It’s a way for our teams to build up their marketing gut. While we definitely deploy and use a lot of insights pre and post launching of work, we also think it’s really important for people to build that creative gut themselves. All the work that we’re going to be launching is in an effort to have it really be strong MUSCLE work.

How do you communicate to consumers at the point of sale?

If you think about the decision criteria of how people think of consuming beer and really purchasing beer while the traditional above the line is so important, so much of the consumer’s decision is actually happening at the point of purchase when they go to a beer store, a liquor store, a convenience store, a grocery store. Making sure that our brands show up in really meaningful ways is super important to us. As we think about partnering with our retailers, we actually have a big marketing organization and part of it is a function that’s shopper marketing.

We partner specifically with them and we make sure that any campaign we have, whether it’s Coors Light, Choose Chill, Miller Lights, Taste Like Miller Time or Banquet. Everything that we do is connected at all of those different touch points. We make sure that we have retail programs with the right point-of-sale or consumer promotions that are then going to get us executed at retail.

How have your past experiences at Pepsi and Maple Leaf Foods helped prepare you for this role?

I look at every opportunity as a really good learning experience. It’s funny because early in my career, I would have mentors that would say, “Are you learning?” And I’d be like, “What are you talking about? I want to do things. I want to get results.” Now looking back on it, I did learn along the way and it is helping me today. Before Molson Coors, I was at a Canadian food company called Maple Leaf Foods for six and a half years. I was at PepsiCo for about seven and a half years. Every company and every experience was a great learning opportunity.

Maple Leaf Foods was an organization that helped me deeply understand the general management and the commercial aspect of marketing. It was very customer driven and the expectation was you really owned and understood all the nuts and bolts of your business from the bill of materials to how product gets out to the shelf to working hand in hand with sales teams.

PepsiCo was a great school in terms of branding and innovation. It’s a wonderful organization with a lot of very smart people, a lot of ex consultants. I was able to learn a lot in terms of strategy and building a vision.

Then coming to Molson Coors has continued to be a learning experience. I came in first to lead innovation. I was able to bring in a lot of the learnings from PepsiCo and the non-alc world. Now as CMO, I learned from my predecessor Michelle Saint-Jacques in terms of how to think about building brands. We’re continuing to push and elevate that. I have seen this chapter of my journey as a really important one in terms of honing in and becoming a better creative marketer.

I keep hearing you say, building brands that people want to hang out with. Can you tell me more about what that means?

Branding and positioning are so important in the beer category. What you are holding in your hand really does say so much about who you are as a human being. So this idea of being the brand that people want to hang out with is so important to us because we know that what you’re holding matters. We want to build brands that more people want to hang out with.

We want to attract more consumers to our brands, whether it’s existing brands that we have, or if that means creating new brands or thinking about different occasions. This is actually a big reason why we’re evolving from not just beer, but to total beverages. We want to attract new consumers, whether it’s multicultural consumers, or younger, legal drinking age consumers. The idea of growing our category by growing our brands through new consumers is very important to us.