o St. Patrick's Day is cluttered with beer and spirits all fighting to be top of mind. Understandably, brands such as Jameson and Guinness are at the forefront of one of the most popular drinking occasions of the year. However, light beer plays an important role given its sessionability, or, the ability for consumers to enjoy it throughout the day and extend their celebration with friends. Enter Miller Lite; high awareness among consumers but lacking in consideration among younger drinkers. The question became: How can Miller Lite “out-Irish” other beers On St. Patrick’s Day weekend to further drive relevancy and reconsideration among younger drinkers? In order to help solve this business challenge, MillerCoors distributed new, breakthrough AR experiences to support Miller Lite’s activation plans for St. Patrick's Day On-Premise.

A series of engaging AR experiences allowed consumers to celebrate with Miller Lite’s iconic St. Patrick’s Day character, the bearded man.

•Immersive AR Portal: Users stepped into a surreal 360ª Miller Lite St. Pat's bar, the perfect place to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Once inside, users got an authentic Irish experience with the bearded man as their guide.

•Coin-Toss AR Game: What’s a St. Pat’s celebration without a drinking game? We gave users a chance to toss a coin at a bullseye to dunk the bearded man into a pot of gold.

•Image Recognition + WebAR: During St. Pat’s weekend, users scanned one of two designated image markers on cans or packaging; unlocking a first-to-market WebAR experience that brought the iconic bearded man to life to party alongside them. He played a traditional Irish tune, danced with a snake and of course, enjoyed a Miller Lite.

•Mobile gaming reaches 151M 21+ users in the US, who on average spend 45 minutes per day playing. Our partner designed the executions with their consumers in mind – A21+ who are deeply engaged with mobile games and enjoy continuing this interaction during their ad experiences. Consumers had the opportunity to immerse themselves in the Miller Lite world and engage with satisfying gameplay.

•To build buzz and awareness, we launched the AR Portal and AR Game activations two weeks prior to St. Pat’s weekend.

•Then, we rewarded consumers for celebrating with Miller Lite by launching the Image Recognition + WebAR activation the weekend of St. Pat’s – giving them a fun experience and helping us drive sales during the important celebratory weekend.

•We complemented the experiences with paid social content to drive incremental awareness and excitement for the activation, leading up to, and during, St. Pat’s weekend.

With strong collaboration between Miller Lite clients, agencies, partners, and production teams, these first-to-market activations were developed and executed within a 3-month timeframe.

As an alcohol brand, we had to be sure all functions of these experiences met the comprehensive legal requirements. Units included an age-gate to ensure we were not serving alcohol ads to an underage consumer.

For the In-App AR ads, we prioritized mobile gaming inventory as it provided a seamless transition for consumers. This allowed us to enhance the consumer experience versus disrupting it and taking them out of their gaming mindset. The media teams planned an estimated 9.7MM impressions in a 2-week flight.

For the WebAR experience, we leveraged marker image recognition technology within a web browser. This activation was only live during the weekend of St. Pat’s.

We had supporting media across social to extend the program (+20.5MM impressions) into select social environments and leaned into user behaviors weekend of, prioritizing Snapchat.

•In order for Miller Lite to “out-Irish” competitors on St. Patrick’s Day we reached our consumers at scale with an engaging, relevant experience, effectively driving reconsideration of Miller Lite.

•The campaign surpassed delivery goals by nearly 10%.

•The In-App AR experiences proved engaging for adults aged 21+. 80% completed the coin toss and 93% completed the portal tour. These completion rates significantly surpassed historic benchmarks of 40%.

•Users spent over 3 minutes on average interacting with the WebAR bearded man.

•A Nielsen MBE study showed significant lift in brand metrics associated with the brand’s objectives:

- 36% lift for Miller Lite in association with St. Patrick’s Day among users exposed to the creative.

- 25% lift in favorability for Miller Lite versus competitors associated with St. Patrick’s Day.

- Lastly, 40% lift amongst those exposed to the ad unit(s) for intent to consider Miller Lite for their next drinking occasion.