Adgully Exclusive | We have the 'The Coolest Job' - Miller's High Life

SABMiller, the global beverage brand has launched Miller High Life beer in India, through an unusual and mysterious campaign that attracted eyes balls all over the digital marketing space. "The Coolest Job", as the title of the campaign, SABMiller is looking for qualified individuals, who embody and endorse the spirit of the brand - 'Work Hard, Party Hard.'

Speaking about the campaign to Adgully, Derek Jones, Director, Marketing, SAB Miller India said, "It was inspired by a similar campaign done in Australia. We thought of doing something on those lines instead of using the conventional method of launching a product. It is is seen a wonderful opportunity of talking to our potential consumers, explaining them our philosophy and brand positioning of 'Work hard, Party Harder'".

The campaign was launched on Facebook and has be able to successfully attract the 'correct' people the company wanted to interact. "We plan to offer a light drink for a perfect transition from a hard day at work to party environment", he said. Conceptualized and designed by the Senior Brand Manager, Gurudev Prasad and a Bangalore based agency called Geek Online Ventures as the digital agency, the campaign build a high amount of mysrty around it. "It took us almost 3 months to develop this, since we did not know how the response would be. Also, we have developed the application where one not only 'likes', but needs to fill the profile, ask for votes and recommendations, thus making the developing and testing a long time", explained Gurudev. The brand as roped in Mudra as the creative agency, while Star Corp doing the media bit.

The target market being young professionals, over legal drinking age, who are media savvy, especially who are heavy social media users, the campaign calls for continuous engagement. Ellaborating on their strategy on this front, Guruprasad said, "the good thing about social marketing is that after a certain time period, you don't have to do much. The community itself starts interacting within themselves. So, in our case, though we are a month old, we just sit there and act as moderators of the comments and conversations happening there". With a strategy that goes beyond only recruiting, SABMiller's campaign looks at engaging, rewarding, and see lot of activation that shall happen through this network. Thus, "we have very participative, collaborative ways of engaging with the consumers", he said.

Called as champagne off beer's, because of the tapered neck of the bottle of Miller's High Life, the brand will be launched first in the metro's and by the end of September will be available across the country. With strong global foothold, though at the initial stage in India, Miller High Life expects to be among the premium brands at maturity. The international repute being a strong USP, Miller's High Life, has served numerous taste pallets and believes that the liquid id quite magical in its self, "we promise, the more people try it, the more people will consume it", said Derek.

A complete departure from its competitors and their campaigns, the campaign is a result of rigorous, collaborative and democratic brainstorming session, held between all sectors, the brand manager, creative agency, sales and trade people as well. The Coolest Job campaign has also been extended to traditional media like magazines and radio, "but the intent has been, driving traffic to the Facebook App, alongside innovative forms of communicating like tie up with job portal Naukri.com, associating with a few premium B-School Alumni networks to post about this idea", explained Guruprasad. The innovation does not end at the campaign level, but goes upto sampling as well. Elaborating on this point, Guruprasad sighted another interesting and unsual way to reach out to their consumers, "we have and i-pad game, where the game evaluates the player's / consumer's 'work hard party harder' quotient; and depending on this we sample product to them. So don't just sample product, we communicate the brand's philosophy and then sample products"

With over 90,000 'likes' (when this story was filed) on the Facebook page and thousands of applications competing for the job of the liquor company's brand ambassador, Miller's High Life campaign has surely created a buzz around itself, and only for the good! | By Ankita Tanna [ankita(at)adgully.com]