If you’re going to a party in South America, people expect you to bring beer. It’s a cultural rule of thumb. When 18- to 24-year-olds get together, they consume 660% more beer than other kinds of alcohol.

But it puts Gen Z drinkers in a tough spot. They don’t always want to drink beer, but they often buy beer to fit in with everyone else at the party. They’re actually more interested in other kinds of alcohol — namely sweet, refreshing, and easy-to-drink beverages.

We knew that this wasn’t just about selling hard lemonade. It was about selling the confidence to drink something other than beer.

Attacking beer would’ve been the predictable challenger move. And besides, it would have alienated the mike’s audience from their beer-drinking friends. So mike’s Hard Lemonade showed up exactly where people are told to buy beer for parties: in beer ad campaigns themselves.

We partnered with ABI beer brands in South America to create the first-ever ad campaigns within other ad campaigns.

First, we put someone drinking mike’s in the background of our beer partners’ ads. Then we shot our own ads on the sets of those beer ads, but from the mike’s drinker’s POV. This allowed the brand to seamlessly show up in each beer ad and then create its own story from a mike’s drinker’s POV. The hard lemonade and beer commercials ran back-to-back.

Beyond film, the campaign recruited younger beer drinkers across social media, events, out-of-home, point-of-sale, and e-commerce.

In short, beer brands’ multimillion-dollar media plans became mike’s media plans.

Tapping into beer brands’ audiences was like opening up a treasure chest. It gave mike’s an endless number of recruitment opportunities; anytime younger adults saw beer, they’d also see an invitation to bring mike’s to the party.

mike’s made it OK for Gen Z to drink what they actually wanted to drink at parties across South America.

Before 2022, retailers sold mike’s in stores, but the brand hadn’t invested in a major marketing launch.

This campaign was a return-on-marketing-investment gold mine. mike’s notched approximately $4 in revenue for every $1 invested — on a small media budget.

Winning during beer occasions also caused mike’s year-over-year growth to skyrocket.

The campaign made an outsized impact:

1,625% sales growth in Colombia

192% sales growth in Brazil

93% sales growth incremental to beer sales in Brazil and Colombia

#1 RTD in Colombia and Peru

#1 RTD in Brazil in growth

#3 RTD In Paraguay

And growing sales also meant outselling other Ready-to-Drink brands. mike’s outsold Smirnoff Ice, its biggest RTD competitor in Brazil, for the first time.

mike’s earned people’s attention and taste buds by owning beer occasions: It garnered 438 million+ impressions in South America, a 213% increase in weekly mentions online in all of South America, and achieved the #1 brand sentiment score of any AB InBev global brand.