This year’s Super Bowl marks the return of the iconic Coors Light train, with LL Cool J and Lainey Wilson—as well as The O’Jays—along for the ride.
The original Silver Bullet Train debuted in 2005 and kept chugging through 2012 on the premise that overheated people everywhere should have access to a cold train of beer regardless of whether they were standing near tracks. While The Onion envisioned the disaster that such a train would wreak across the nation, ads posited that people from various walks of life—from commuters to hip-hop forefather/television detective Ice-T—could benefit from a trainful of cold, foamy refreshment.
This year, during the first half of Super Bowl 58, Coors Light teamed up with its creative partners at Droga5 to reinvent the train as a courier of “chill” and, naturally, cans of Coors Light. The 30-second ad’s opening sequence seems optimistic enough—suggesting even without their teams’ names or logos that fans of the Los Angeles Chargers and Washington Commanders could one day watch their teams in the Big Game—but it turns tense when the lone fan in gold and powder blue elicits sneers from his girlfriend’s host family in burgundy.
As if sensing the discomfort from its Rocky Mountain lair, the Coors Light “Chill Train” bursts from the craggy landscape—with the can-shaped turbine of its locomotive taking in external heat and expelling it as snow. In the 90-second extended cut, it rips past a rural gas station, miraculously placing a Coors Light in a customer’s hand and freezing a dog’s water bowl.
Laying tracks behind it (new to Coors Light train lore), it barrels through a white-picket suburb and freezes a robed man’s laundry to the line, leaving him a beer as an apology. As Wilson stands for a photo shoot in front of a backdrop at a Hollywood studio, the train rolls by and deposits a beer beneath her hat.
A couple in Adirondack chairs on a palm-shaded beach, sitting beside a bucket of long-necked clear bottles that certainly are not Corona, have their sand replaced with snow and bottles swapped for cans. A father giving away his daughter at an outdoor wedding greets the passing train with a single tear, which immediately freezes.
Finally, back in the tense two-story family room of an anonymous metropolitan area, the train crashes through the wall and reveals its conductor—LL Cool J—who leaves Coors Light and remembers that he has a song to play. Cue The O’Jays’ “Love Train.”
As this bit of CGI (computer-generated imagery) marketing nostalgia ripped by at 900 miles per hour, it contained the images of 100 fans who booked virtual seats on the train and received $500 apiece in talent fees and swag to commemorate the occasion. As only the second Super Bowl ad produced by MolsonCoors since Anheuser-Busch ended its nearly 35-year run of Big Game exclusivity, this Coors Light spot reaches back to the brand’s loyal fans while reinventing the message for a new generation.
“We wanted to bring this train back in a way that would excite those who have been waiting for it to return as much as it would excite people who have never heard about the train before,” said Marcelo Pascoa, vice president of marketing for the Coors Family of Brands. “The question that we asked ourselves and Droga5 was, ‘What can we do with the train now that we couldn’t do before—something that through the magic of technology is now possible, but wasn’t possible 12 years ago?’”
Rebuilding the train
Over 10 to 20 years, even a fictional train is going to develop some rust.
As Pascoa noted, Coors Light no longer actively uses “Silver Bullet” in its advertising, so that name is out. Secondly, the slim “Silver Bullet” Coors Light can design of the late 20th century and early 21st century that Droga5 executive creative director Kevin Weir credited for the train’s original “retro-futurism” is gone, as well, rendering many of the previous iterations obsolete.
Finally, there’s the issue of what people actually remember about the train. Weir noted that, throughout its lifetime, it’s been referred to as the Rocky Mountain Express (which is a completely different Canadian train), the Silver Bullet Express (also Canadian, but at least Coors Light was involved) and the Coors Light Love Train (which is now search-engine shorthand for old Coors Light videos).
“People don’t really remember the ads, per se, as much as they remember the train and they remember the song and then remember the beer,” said Chris Colliton, executive creative director at Droga5. “It gave us a clean slate in terms of what to do with the ad and how to bring it back.”
The Droga5 team began discarding the pieces that didn’t work and building around the parts of the train that resonated with fans. They worked with director Daniel Warwick and visual effects company bEpic to develop a sleeker, more modern version of the train and work through the technology of the frost-producing party train’s heat-eating turbine.
They also reconsidered the train’s backstory and superpowers. It no longer had to be hot for the train to show up, but it could still go basically anywhere. However, instead of pretending that a train blasting through the country at 900 mph wouldn’t have an impact on the people and places it passed, the Droga5 team became “a bit more self aware” and had it blow snow, freeze water, lay down tracks and occasionally cause some structural damage.
In perhaps the most important continuation of the old ads, however, the train had to be a welcome intruder, make people feel better and, at the very least, leave them a little something for their trouble.
“Even the old ads, which are a little outdated now, there was a charm to them—there was an optimism [and] a heart,” Weir said. “Even though [the train is] causing a little more destruction now, it’s a force for good, and if those people are insured, they’ll be fine.”
People all over the world
For a party-crashing, terrain-altering party train to be considered a hero, it needs a hero’s quest. It needs Forrest Gump’s run or Frodo’s Lord of the Rings trip across Middle Earth. It needs to meet disparate people in the places they call home and leave the situation a bit better than it was when the train arrived.
Droga5 made sure the train touched far-flung portions of the map and came in contact with people who could spread the word. Wilson signed a multiyear deal with Coors Light in January that includes both her first Super Bowl ad appearance and sponsorship of her tour later this year. LL Cool J, meanwhile, picks up where Ice-T left off by providing the ad’s punctuation mark.
With MolsonCoors making up for lost time at the Big Game and Coors Light posting volume growth in the U.S. for every reported quarter of 2023, the company needs everyone to be as on board with its Super Bowl push as its Chill Train’s conductor.
“When he came to set, he embodied the role like no one else,” Colliton said. “He walked onto set, blasted ‘Love Train’ from his own jam box—dressed as a conductor—and he’s like, ‘Let’s do this thing.’”
For the latest Super Bowl 58 advertising news—who’s in, who’s out, teasers, full ads and more—check out Adweek’s Super Bowl 2024 Ad Tracker and the rest of our stories here. And join us on the evening of Feb. 11 for the best in-game coverage of the commercials.
CREDITS
Agency: Droga5 NY
CEO: Dan Gonda
Chief creative officer Scott Bell
Chief strategy officer: Colleen Leddy
Executive creative directors: Chris Colliton, Kevin Weir
Creative directors: Nick Bauman, Rob McQueen
Copywriters: Julia Heydemann, Christian Zerbel
Art directors: Martha Gill, Jasmine Paylor
Co-heads of production: Ruben Mercadal, Jenn Mann
Senior producer, film: Roger Morán
Associate producer, Film: Josh Campbell
Executive producer, interactive: Grace Wang
Executive producer, print: Alyssa Dolman
Producers, interactive: Brooke Renov, Ariana Narang
Head of business affairs: Dan Simonetti
Associate director, business affairs: Tom Vendittelli
Business affairs manager: Megan Dennehy
Senior talent manager: Sunny Valencia
Executive traffic manager: Wendy Kaplan
Senior music supervisor: Mike Ladman
Music supervisor: Mara Techam
Head of brand strategy: Michael Osbourn
Brand strategy director: Asher Stamell
Senior strategist: Mateo Martinez
Communications strategy director: Camille Gray
Data strategy director: Sean La’Brooy
Group account director: Sharon Byer
Account director: Jeff Winsper
Account managers: Don Spampinato, Brendan Woeppel
Senior project manager: Emily Smookler
Molson Coors Beverage Co.
Chief marketing officer: Sofia Colucci
Vice president, marketing, Coors, global and North America: Marcelo Proenca Pascoa
Marketing director: Katie Feldman
Senior marketing manager: Eric Kouri
Marketing manager: Lauren Flicher
Associate marketing managers: Rose Bleakley, Kelsey Ott
Vp, Canada marketing: Leslie Malcolm
Senior marketing manager, Coors Canada: Sarah Robson
Production company: Biscuit
Director: Daniel Warwick
Founding partner: Shawn Lacy
Executive producer: Andrew Travelstead
Producer: Jeff McDougall
Producer (Los Angeles): Jeff Shupe
Production supervisor: Chloe Stella
Head of production: Sean Moody
Director of photography: Ekkehart Pollack
Production designer: Mike Berg
Wardrobe stylist: Richard de Jager
Service production company: Orange
Producer: Jon Day
Production manager: Megan Oehley
Production coordinator: Anthony Abduraghmaan
Editorial: Work Editorial
Editor: Rich Orrick
Senior assistant editor: Joseph Tuzzolino
Managing director: Erica Thompson
Executive producer: Alejandra Alarcon
Head of production: Chris Delarenal
Senior producer: Malia Rose
VFX/postproduction: bEpic
VFX supervisor: Bastian Konradt
CG supervisor: Felix Höhne
Executive producer: Lion Graf
Artists: Andre Brumme, Antonio Ramos, Chris Bleier, Chris Weingart, Christina Agapitou, Dominik Müller, Felix Batzer, Florian Friedmann, Gereon Zwosta, Hannes Gerl, Jakob Klauenberg, Jan Meckes, Jonathan Nordlöf, Marcel Pichert, Mario Borgmeier, Markus Oswald, Michael Eichner, Milan Braune, Patrick Baitinger, Paul Jansen, Paula Blesa, Saad Hassan, Sebastian, Sylvi Rössler. Tino Waschke, Tony Dorfmeister, Vincenz Neuhaus
Audio postproduction: PostHuman
Chief sound engineer: Sloan Alexander
Post producer: Rob Suchecki
Executive producer: James Dean Wells
Color: Trafik
Colorist: Daniel de Vue
Producer: Julia King
Original music: Human
Executive producer: James Dean Wells
Creative lead: Andy Bloch
Composer: Jonathan Russell
Licensed music
Song: Love Train
Artist: The O’Jays
Website production company: Wildlife
Executive creative directors/partners: Jake Friedman, Scott Friedman
Managing director: Brandon Del Nero
Executive producer: Helena Lam
Technical director: Pavel Zagoskin
Integrated producer: Karina Micheli
Developers: David Van Ochten, Michael Meinhart, Scott Beacher
Creative director: Leo Bridle
UX designer: Darren Lou
Design lead: Daniel Munzing
Motion designer: Omur Ozgur
Design and fabrication studio: Paper Mache Monkey
Owner: Grady Barker
Technical director: Collin Eastwood
Fabrication company: Picky Print
Print partner: Ken Metz
Print production company: Duggal Visual Solutions
Business developer: Sugriv Grover
Design and pre-engineer:Adrian Ortega
Prototype specialist: Jose Vera
