GOLDEN, COLO. - Coors Brewing Co. is calling in its chairman to rebuild the 'Rocky Mountain legend.'" />
GOLDEN, COLO. - Coors Brewing Co. is calling in its chairman to rebuild the 'Rocky Mountain legend.'" /> Coors Looks to Rebuild 'Rocky Mountain Legend' <b>By Jim Kir</b><br clear="none"/><br clear="none"/>GOLDEN, COLO. - Coors Brewing Co. is calling in its chairman to rebuild the 'Rocky Mountain legend.'
GOLDEN, COLO. - Coors Brewing Co. is calling in its chairman to rebuild the 'Rocky Mountain legend.'" />

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Coors Looks to Rebuild 'Rocky Mountain Legend' By Jim Kir

GOLDEN, COLO. - Coors Brewing Co. is calling in its chairman to rebuild the 'Rocky Mountain legend.'

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The company is readying a major corporate campaign using chairman Peter Coors to boost the image of its leading brands, much as actor Mark Harmon did as ad spokesman for the flagship Coors brand’s mystique in the mid-1980s. Although neither the company nor its agencies would comment on the campaign, Coors is expected to spend $15-20 million on the campaign.
The Foote, Cone & Belding/Chicago-produced spots, expected to break in national markets within the next two weeks, show Peter Coors ‘somewhere near Golden, Colo.’ talking about things like the freshness of the water used to brew Coors products and the Rocky Mountain heritage. The ads are reminiscent of the Harmon ads done by FCB for the Coors brand when the company was expanding its distribution east of the Mississippi. Those ads were credited with building the legendary Rocky Mountain imagery that helped rocket the company to the No. 3 spot among brewers.
The campaign has been three years in the making. While most other brewers focus vertically on specific products, such as Miller Lite and Genuine Draft and A-B’s Budweiser and Bud Light, Coors will be the first in some time to support a multi-brand image-building campaign. Coors considered a corporate push on-and-off during the last three years, but the ideas fizzled, and the company has used only moderate corporate pushes.
The use of Peter Coors last year in a campaign in Northeast markets rekindled the idea of using the chairman in the corporate campaign. Last fall, Coors had to defend its brewing process as well as its cherished Rocky Mountain imagery after A-B launched a vicious campaign claiming the Rocky Mountain imagery was ‘a myth’ in ads for Natural Light.
FCB shot Peter Coors telling consumers his company spent a lot of time picking a place where they could match the water used in its brewing process back in Golden. The campaign, according to company officials, seemed to work with consumers, and A-B later backed away from its negative campaign.
‘When you see him, he has a real honesty and believability when he talks,’ said one Coors insider. ‘It’s a campaign that revists some of Coors’ specific touchstones that built the Coors name 10 years ago.’
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