MILLER LITE
To increase purchase intent and favorability, Miller Lite tested custom localized Instagram ads in English and Spanish in the Los Angeles, California market and saw a 4.2-point lift in purchase intent.
Introduced in 1975 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Miller Lite is a US pilsner-style light beer with only 96 calories. To brew what it refers to as “The Original Light Beer” Miller Lite uses water, barley malt, yeast, hops, hop extract and corn syrup. Miller Lite is owned by Molson Coors Beverage Company.
lift in purchase intent
lift in favorability
lift in ad recall
Miller Lite wanted to test running a localized ad campaign at the city level as a complement to its nationwide advertising strategy to see if it could reach English- and Spanish-speaking beer lovers in Los Angeles, California, boost brand perception and drive brand consideration in that market.
THE SOLUTION
Focusing on local markets
Miller Lite had previously run a localized ad campaign across the whole state of California, but next wanted to test a campaign specifically focused on the Los Angeles market. Miller Lite partnered with its agencies, Connect and Media.Monks, on designing a strategy to boost brand favorability and purchase intent, and also collaborated closely with the team at Meta to execute the localized media campaign.
For this campaign, the team built a variety of video and photo ads, as well as Collaborative Ads linking to the delivery service Drizly. The team followed Meta’s best practices when building the mobile-first creative assets. The ad creative showed brand elements within the first second, used fast-cut movement to grab attention quickly and included text overlays for sound-off viewing.
To ensure that these ads resonated at the local level, the team designed creative with relevant imagery and messaging to forge an association between Miller Lite and California, and it customized the creative in both English and Spanish to increase relevancy. One video showed the brand’s packaging with a graphic in the shape of California, and the text overlay: "Tastes like Miller time, California. Great taste. 96 calories” to effectively highlight the brand’s value proposition. The Collaborative Ads included the messaging: “Pick up special California 12 and 18 packs of Miller Lite or have them delivered today” in conjunction with the Shop now button that linked to Drizly’s website for product ordering and delivery.
Miller Lite showed the ads to legal drinking age English- and Spanish-speaking consumers living in designated marketing areas (DMA) of the Los Angeles metro area, including people with an interest in beer, Miller Lite or Drizly. The team delivered the ads in Feed, Stories and Reels on Instagram and Facebook, as well as on Instagram Explore, Facebook in-stream, Messenger Stories and Marketplace. And it used the Advantage+ campaign budget feature to automatically distribute the budget across the best-performing ad sets in real time.
Miller Lite measured the results of the February 27–May 28, 2023 campaign using a Meta brand lift study, which revealed:
- 4.2-point lift in purchase intent
- 4.8-point in lift in favorability
- 6.9-point lift in ad recall