It’s called a beer can, not a beer can’t. That’s something Miller Lite has been acutely aware of with its new marketing campaigns. (Can-paigns?) Remember they turned a beer can into a fully functioning video game controller? The quest to see what a beer can can’t do has now yielded the first “Cantenna,” which Miller Lite says is “the only reception device on the market that is great tasting and serves up football straight to fans’ living rooms.”
https://twitter.com/MillerLite/status/1306745054451634177
That’s right, it’s an actual digital antenna made from a beer can, which is also full of Miller Lite. It’s designed to help football fans who aren’t able to tailgate or watch the games in person (or even watch them at bars with friends) make their home game days a little more festive. Also, it plays on the fact that most people have gotten rid of cable in favor of streaming services.
For our younger readers, a quick note: An antenna used to be a necessary part of the television for the sake of receiving the broadcast. And sometimes it just didn’t work, and people would need to get creative with things like wire coathangers and tin foil.
“Streaming live sports can get frustrating and expensive, and if cord-cutters want to watch football, they’re often forced to resort to sketchy, unreliable, illegal streaming,” Stephanie Clanfield, associate marketing manager for Miller Lite said in a press release. “Miller Lite is determined to bring you smooth streaming and make your Miller Time a little easier with the new Miller Lite Cantenna.”
The promotional campaign even mocked the practice of finding those illegal streaming sites by imitating them with links on social media. (Let’s cut the crap here – we’ve all tried them, and we know what they look like. There’s a reason Miller Lite knew this would work.) When people clicked the link, they saw a Miller Lite-themed parody of the “Sunday Primetime” song that parodied the danger of illegal streaming, and touted the Cantenna as the solution.
https://twitter.com/MillerLite/status/1305506588275470340
“In order to really disrupt cord-cutters, we couldn’t rely on typical marketing tactics,” Clanfield added. “Instead, we chose an unconventional approach to serve them up something unforgettable during a time when they were most engaged.”
The most genius part of this really comes from the stream cutting in and out enough to obscure exactly which trademark-protected football league you were watching, and skip over a pixelated trademark-protected logo. That is how you incorporate attention to detail and legal awareness.
So, did you send this last Sunday trying to finagle a stream from a site mostly in Bosnian just so you could watch the Falcons embarrass themselves? Do you wish you had your own Cantenna to alleviate this issue (the stream, not the Falcons)? Head over to MillerLiteCantenna.com, and you could win one of your own. Miller Lite is giving them away until Oct. 12.
