Zac Bodner Molson Case Write Up
Molson’s “Cool Shots” campaign didn’t achieve its desired results for many reasons. The first and most glaring was the content of the campaign itself. “Cool Shots,” as a campaign, really wasn’t very “cool” at all. Think about it. Molson is a beer company. The whole idea of their campaign was to tell college kids to send in photos of them drinking in a dorm room. That’s basic and lame. There’s nothing out of the ordinary or high concept about the promotion. The key rules to developing social media content are to make sure it is: relevant, entertaining, engaging, informative, and authentic (among others). The only characteristic on this list the campaign (possibly) checked off is “entertaining,” and that’s if you find looking at looking at drunk kids doing wonky drunk stuff entertaining. Considering their target market, they might have succeeded on this one. Molson prides itself on being a charitable, socially responsible company that champions strong decision making while drinking. This campaign runs counter to their creed as a company. Primarily, they should have considered being more authentic; the campaign could have assumed a completely different form - one that really would have been relevant, engaging, entertaining, informative and authentic. Perhaps instead of a photo contest of drunk dorm room shenanigans, the contest could have promoted socially responsible drinking. What if the concept of the contest were to share funny (or not) pictures of friends not letting their friends get in trouble while drinking. Imagine pictures of kids putting their friends in a cab, or giving them a piggy back ride home, or pushing them back to the dorm room in a wheelbarrow. Beneath the pictures, the posts could give a brief synopsis of what was going on. Then, the school with the most responsible drinking pics would win. They could complement this with relevant and useful content about underage drinking, binge drinking, and the problems they can cause now and in the future. They could create forums and discussions about common problems faced by college kids when dealing with drinking, and provide insight on how to deal. In this way, they could have still promoted Molson products, differentiated themselves from other beer companies who don’t stand for much besides selling beer, engaged their target audience with humor and information, and also made it cool and unique and funny to act responsibly. They could have also succeeded in being one of the first organizations to pull off some big time marketing on Facebook. This would have made Molson legendary. If Molson didn’t want to go this route, and kept the “Cool Shots” promotion as it was - then they needed to first think about and ultimately address the privacy concerns the campaign presented, both to the participants and the colleges they represented. Molson was very short-sighted with this campaign premise. They had to have known that telling college age kids to send in pictures of them drinking in their dorm room could lead to some
problems. One measure they could have taken was to warn them a little about potential risks, or have some sort of disclaimer encouraging them not to go to crazy. But, that would have made the photos more bland, and less likely to be shared. Molson could have also done something as simple as moderating each post. Instead of posting the pic to a school’s Facebook page, they post it to one consolidated Molson Cool Shots page and each photo could have been screened. Then, Molson could exhibit the ones that weren’t too incriminating. The last thing they should have done is contacted the schools themselves for permission. Molson demonstrates a major lack of foresight by having the students represent their own schools on Facebook and not consider that the schools themselves might have a problem with it. But, if they told the schools about the campaign beforehand, that most likely wouldn’t have gone over so well. For these reasons, the first of these options is the stronger one. Molson should have modified the campaign as outlined to remain authentic to their brand and beliefs, and to provide something of relevance and value to their target audience.