Molson Coors CMO Michelle St. Jacques on Creating Opportunity in an Unprecedented Year

When Michelle St. Jacques stepped into the role of chief marketing officer for Molson Coors last February, she was served a curve ball on day one. Just the day before, Bud Light had run a snarky ad in the Super Bowl pointing out that the company’s two biggest brands are made with corn syrup. So St. Jacques moved quickly. The company responded nimbly to the “corn-troversy,” as it came to be known, playfully countering the misconception that Bud Light’s ads created and returning with a few jabs of their own. There’s no corn syrup in the final product, Molson Coors explained—it’s all fermented into alcohol. It’s simply a different source of sugar. That all led to a lawsuit which Molson Coors ultimately lost in at the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May of this year, but the back and forth gave St. Jacques the opportunity to push Molson Coors’ brands to the front of consumers’ minds just before launching Coors Light’s new "Made to Chill" campaign last summer. The experience, she said, served as a training ground for the chaos to come in 2020. Adweek caught up with St. Jacques to discuss what’s been a very busy year for Molson Coors, which has launched two seltzer brands and created more than 30 ad campaigns over the course of 2020 that weren't on the books before the pandemic changed the entire cultural landscape in March. With a strategy that she describes as “fast, messy, awesome,” St. Jacques worked tirelessly this year to move at the speed of culture and interact authentically with consumers and fans. The following has been edited for clarity and brevity. Adweek: Coming to the end of 2020, what are your big takeaways from this year? Michelle St. Jacques: In a year like 2020, which has obviously been unprecedented on all fronts, it's been really amazing to see kind of how the business and brands have persevered throughout it. You can look at a moment like this and say, “This is a disaster, what do I do?” Or you can look at it as an awesome opportunity—an opportunity to connect with your consumers in a different way, an opportunity to show up when people need you. For us, we've tried to use this year as a way to not only make sure that the beer is flowing in 2020, but to use it as a way to come out of 2020 even stronger from a brand perspective. What has guided your marketing strategy and decision making this year? Three key principles have been guiding how we've been running these brands. One is to commit to what you stand for as a brand. I think it's incredibly important in a moment of chaos or uncertainty, to be really clear about who you are as a brand, and what role do you play in consumers' lives and what are the right ways to show up in their world based on that role. The second one is around the idea of moving at the speed of culture. We've been talking about the “fast, messy, awesome” mindset since last year when I joined the company, and it's all about moving with speed, adjusting, being agile based on what's happening. In some ways, I didn't know it then, but 2019 was the training ground that was needed for 2020. Pivoting very quickly based on what your consumer's reality has allowed us to find those moments when our brands could really authentically communicate. Finally, in a moment like this year, in a moment of chaos, one of the critical things is to double down on creativity. I think you saw, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of brands started to fall into an approach that all felt the same. It's even harder in the environment of 2020 to win consumers' hearts and minds. And the only way to do that is to find new, fresh, interesting approaches to connect with your consumer. You have to lean forward and try to find new ways to connect with your consumers and be bolder than normal. Molson Coors did so much advertising work this year. What is some of the work that best exemplifies this idea of leaning forward into creativity and boldness? We had a new platform that we launched for Coors Light last year around “Made to Chill.” This year, we asked ourselves, “What is our role in this moment?” Our brand purpose for Coors Light is all around refreshing people's spirit. And we got this beautiful little gift that kind of fell into our lap in April, where this amazing Coors Light fan—she's 93 years old, her name is Olive—someone took a picture of her in her home with a sign that said, “Bring me more beer,” and she was holding a Coors Light. Obviously, we delivered the beer to her, as one does. What we saw on social media was how many people were saying, “Man, I could really use the beer right now too.” That actually turned into one of my favorite moments of the year, which was a campaign we launched in April called “America Could Use a Beer.” Our product is not going to fix the pandemic right now, we know that, we're self aware! But what is something that we can do to bring a smile to people's faces?Michelle St. Jacques, CMO, Molson Coors That creative was very different, from a tonality perspective, than anything else that was out there. We had to say, OK, our product is not going to fix the pandemic right now, we know that, we're self aware! But what is something that we can do to bring a smile to people's faces? Another example of trying to find a way to connect differently was around Miller Lite during football season. We knew that a third of consumers stream football games, and we anticipated that that would increase during the pandemic. And with live streaming comes illegal streaming. So we created a whole product idea called the Cantenna, which allows people to watch a game, legally. I think it was a way to really connect with consumers based on a truth that was happening out in the world that moment. What has been Molson Coors’ strategy around the holidays this year, given that so many consumers will be celebrating differently? A lot of what we've been doing, even from a holiday perspective, has been following a similar mindset or playbook that I talked about earlier. While there's a lot of stuff that's not going to happen this year for holidays, we looked for silver linings. And what we found is that, while some people do like their holiday work parties, a lot of people weren't really sad to see them go. And we tried to take the fact that holiday work parties aren't happening this year and turn it into a "Miller time" moment, an opportunity to connect with a couple of your real friends in a more low-key way. We thought, “How do we do this in a way that doesn't feel like big beer, and feels different and could cut through the clutter?” And so we memorialized these really cringy moments in an art exhibit at the [Los Angeles County Museum of Art]. We partnered with this amazing artist, Alex Prager, and we created these moments that were celebrating what you wouldn’t have to go through this holiday. We also gave away six-packs for people having those at-home celebrations. I just think it's a great way of doing something similar to “America Could Use a Beer” or “Cantenna” that feels fresh and different and relevant. What can we expect to see from Molson Coors in 2021? We entered 2020 with a clear ambition—we wanted to strengthen our iconic brands, and we wanted to aggressively grow in the above-premium category. And honestly, regardless of everything that's happened, we've stayed really focused on those two jobs in 2020. When I think about 2021, we're still focused against that same ambition. You're going to continue to see us work really hard on driving that relevancy, giving people a reason to reach for Coors Light and Miller Lite, with new fresh ways to engage with our 21 to 34-year-old consumers. On top of that, you're going to see us really put a lot of push behind the above-premium portfolio, especially seltzers.