Dive Brief:
- MillerCoors will debut its first marketing campaign for Henry's Hard Soda this weekend in an effort to stand out in the rising hard soda category and attract Gen-X parents with an ad featuring a surprising object — a baby monitor.
- In one ad, four parents yell at a game on TV until an infant's cries are heard over a baby monitor. The company hopes the scenario will encourage this demographic to live "Hard-ish," particularly "suburbanites who have grown up, but not grown old," Ad Age reported from its interview with Bryan Ferschinger, senior director of innovations at MillerCoors.
- The brand is looking beyond the heavily targeted millennial market to expand its appeal to other age groups that will appreciate being able to have a few drinks, which contain only 4.2% alcohol by volume, without feeling much effect the next day. "You want to have fun, but you've got stuff to do tomorrow," Ferschinger told Ad Age.
Dive Insight:
Ferschinger described Gen-Xers as "the soda generation," as compared to millennials, which he called the "juicebox generation," meaning hard soda could appeal to the sense of nostalgia Gen-Xers might feel for their childhood while offering a more adult-positioned product.
This focus on Gen-X could be key in MillerCoors' attempts to stand out as other major alcohol brands crowd the hard soda and hard root beer markets. Late last year, Anheuser-Busch InBev launched its first hard root beer under the new Best Damn Brewing brand, and Pabst is now the national distributor of Not Your Father’s Root Beer from Small Town Brewery. Boston Beer Co.'s Coney Island Brewing Co. now also sells hard root beer, hard ginger ale, and hard orange cream ale.
MillerCoors hopes supporting a strong national ad campaign will be what distinguishes Henry's from other hard soda brands, most of which aren't pursuing the same widespread media exposure.