Grain Belt has used the tagline “The Friendly Beer” for decades. But this time, instead of just saying it, we decided to use football season to make it become the friendly beer. So we created Friendly Football, and turned the beer bottles and caps into game pieces that encouraged people to grab a Grain Belt and open up a little friendly competition. 

We started by redesigning the Grain Belt diamond into a football and created custom 12-pack cases and bottles of Premium and Nordeast beer that included on-package games.

Friendly Football kits were sent to distributors and included custom bar mats that allowed football fans to use their beers as game pieces while playing along with any football game on the bar’s TV.

Special numbers and icons under the bottle caps encouraged people to play games at home with their friends. A Friendly Football website gave fans a place to find cap games and share games of their own. Social posts were used to highlight the newest cap games, demonstrate gameplay and send traffic to the website.

Finally, we promoted the whole Friendly Football program with billboards, in-store posters and radio spots that ran during football games.

The brand saw a spike in both sight traffic and social conversation during the program. Organic search increased by 20 percent compared to the previous year. Most important, Friendly Football became an instant fan favorite, selling out on shelves and increasing participation and excitement, which solidified the brand position as the Friendly Beer.