Strange Brew

Once upon a time in Seattle, two everyday guys, Tim and Chuck, hatched a plan to capture a frozen Refreshus Verticus—a giant beer bottle on legs—from a receding glacier on Mount Rainier in Washington state. The quest might not make sense to someone from the East Coast, but Pacific Northwesterners will recognize it as the latest installment in Cole & Weber/Red Cell in Seattle's regional campaign for Rainier Beer.The campaign, which began in 2004, celebrates the beer's past—re-airing famous commercials from the 1970s, the beer's heyday—and includes a late-night TV show starring Rainier Beer fans Tim and Chuck. It's an effort to move beyond the stereotypical beer ad imagery of jiggling, scantily clad blondes, says agency executive creative director Guy Seese. "How many times can you see women in tight bikinis?" he asks. "We're giving someone a more complicated story with background and back stories, a soap opera for beer drinkers."The most recent offering is a 22-minute short film, Operation Liberation, which debuted at Consolidated Works, an arts center in Seattle, last Wednesday.The agency and client opted for a movie premiere because they wanted to create an event to draw attention to the brand, and their original plan to stage a concert exceeded the budget. (Both this year and last, the campaign was created for less than half a million dollars.) "This is so much more real," says Neal Stewart, marketing director for Rainier Beer. "Tim and Chuck personally invited [Rainier drinkers] to the premiere" by making appearances at bars. "It brings together event marketing, TV and online marketing. It integrates all three of them together in a really neat way."This film builds upon last year's 11 episodes of the Rainier Vision TV show, which picked up Best in Show at the national Addy Awards, the first gold Hybrid award given by the ADC and a gold Clio. Those episodes are now airing at an earlier time, midnight. This year, the agency decided to make the campaign focus on one longer effort that developed the characters and sustained a plot. "We've already conquered network TV—that was a piece of cake," Seese says. "We wanted to take on a short film."In the dryly deadpan comedy—parts of which also appear as four TV teaser spots, which launched in May—Tim and Chuck seize a frozen Refreshus Verticus from a receding glacier, travel with it tied to a truck, tussle with several quirky characters like a park ranger and a man in a bear costume and finally drive through a car wash, which sets the bottle-with-legs free. All the while, the duo bicker and discuss their love of Rainier beer.The shoot, with director Jordan Brady of Area 51, took place over seven days around the Seattle area. Agency creatives appear in the film: associate creative director Jim Elliott plays the park ranger, while Seese shows up as Refreshus Verticus itself. At press time, the agency expected 800 people to attend the premiere. "It re-energizes local interest in the brand," says Elliott. "It builds momentum behind the brand, and a sense of commitment to the brand."Prior to 2004, Rainier hadn't advertised for a decade, during which sales continued to decline. The brand was bought by Pabst in San Antonio, Texas, in 2000. While sales have not increased since the new campaign launched, Stewart says the sales decline has slowed. "We really started to see the brand rebound" after the show debuted in April 2004, Stewart says. "We're very confident this is the way to drive this brand."Seese adds, "If you look nationwide at the beer category, sales are down 5 percent. No one's doing anything extra. [Even] the juggernauts of the beer industry [are] not doing anything interesting. We're doing something intriguing, something to get emotional about."Seese is working on distribution possibilities for the film, including making it available online or on pay-per-view, or possibly including it in 18-packs of beer. Eventually, he hopes to turn the short into a feature film. "Any director or producer who wants to help make this a reality, come calling," Seese says. "There's enough story and enough history there to make a really whacked-out movie."

Brand Marketing

Strange Brew

Mae Anderson

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Mae Anderson