Coors Light Super Bowl ad gives fans a chance to ride on its silver beer train

Coors Light is reaching into its past for its Super Bowl ad, reviving the ice crystal-spewing, speeding silver train that execs say is a metaphor for the momentum behind the brand. The 30-second ad, which will air in the first half of the game, will feature the train known originally as the “Silver Bullet” that has been renamed the “Chill Train.” Coors Light will hype the ad by allowing 100 fans to virtually ride the train via computer-generated imagery; the fans, however, will only be seen in a 90-second slow-motion cut to be released online on game day, as the train will be traveling too fast to make out faces in the broadcast version. Celebrity passengers may also be aboard, but the brand is keeping those details under wraps for now. Droga5, which led last year’s “High Stakes Beer Ad” for parent Molson Coors, is producing this year’s ad. Coors Light is calling it “The First Big Game ad you can book a seat on.” Putting regular people in Super Bowl ads is not unprecedented, however. In 2018, Kraft crowdsourced photos and videos of real families’ Super Bowl Sunday moments and tied them together during the game for an ad that ran in the third quarter. Doritos’ second-quarter ad last year included a person who won a TikTok dance contest. Getting actual passengers onto the train is “definitely ambitious,” said Chris Colliton, executive creative director at Droga5, “but with the power of CGI and movie magic, you can make anything happen.” Super Bowl commercials Tracking the latest brand and agency plans Enter here Fans 21 years old and older can book a seat on the beer train, for free, by visiting www.CoorsLightChillTrain.com following a teaser that will air during Sunday’s NFC Championship game on Fox. The brand will make additional batches of seats available every day at 1 p.m. EST through Feb. 2, with ticket vacancies appearing like seats on an airline app. Seats will be filled on a first-come-first-served basis, according to the brand, which did not specify how many seats will be made available at a time. Since winning passengers will officially be in an ad, they will receive an actor’s contract and $500 in talent fees, in addition to commemorative swag. “Who’s on it? What’s going on? And where is it going? I think will be a surprise for everyone,” Colliton said. The Super Bowl ad comes as Coors Light is riding high on volume and dollar-share gains realized while its rival Bud Light faltered in 2023. Coors Light gained 0.7 percentage points in dollar market share in 2023, ending the year at 5.8% beer market share, the largest yearly jump in beer after Modelo Especial (which now has 8.7% share), according to in-store sales data tracked by NIQ reported by Beer Business Daily. Resuscitating the train recognizes that progress while emphasizing the theme of refreshment the brand has pushed since introducing the “Made to Chill” campaign in 2019. The brand’s recent performance was an “inspiration for the idea,” Marcelo Pascoa, VP of marketing for Molson Coors, said in an interview. “We were always talking about an idea that could meet this unprecedented momentum that we’re experiencing in the business.” This will mark the first Super Bowl ad Coors Light has had to itself; it appeared with sibling brands Miller Lite and Blue Moon in last year’s ad. The brand had been shut out of big game advertising by rival Anheuser-Busch InBev from 1989 until AB InBev relinquished its alcohol exclusivity last year. Coors Light thus far is the only beer brand to announce Super Bowl ad plans. Heineken, which advertised its non-alcohol brand in last year’s game, is sitting out this year, as is Boston Beer Co., which has run regional ads in recent years. AB InBev, the parent of the Budweiser, Bud Light, Busch and Michelob Ultra brands, has yet to announce its plans, although sources anticipate several brands could participate. Pascoa said Molson Coors also wanted a spot that underscored the premise of its recent advertising. “This idea of giving people physical and emotional refreshment, of giving people a nice Coors Light and a visceral moment of chill, is something that has been resonating very strongly since the launch of the ‘Made to Chill’ campaign,” Pascoa said. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs ‘Unsubtle’ Unlike last year, when Molson Coors pitched its Super Bowl ad to multiple agencies, Droga5 got this year’s assignment without an audition. While the brand will continue to use various shops, “Droga is very important to the brand,” Pascoa said. “A lot of the stuff you’ll see coming out of Coors Light in 2024 is going to come from Droga.” The Coors Light train was introduced by agency Foote Cone in 2005, with ads running through 2011. Marty Stock, then with Foote Cone, said the idea was meant to convey a sense of “Rocky Mountain magic” that rival brands couldn’t replicate. The train “was absolutely an idealized delivery vehicle for Rocky Mountain cold refreshment,” Stock, who retired from the agency business in 2022, said in an email interview. One memorable Foote Cone commercial from 2005 showed the train zooming along a Nascar track, a beach and a red-carpet premiere featuring Ice-T, leaving ice crystals, fog and happy drinkers in its wake, set to the O’Jays’ “Love Train.” The train was among several ideas Droga5 presented to the brand this year, and was “the one we were most excited about,” Colliton said. The agency had an indication that fans would respond positively thanks to last year’s Coors Light-Miller Lite Super Bowl ad. That campaign included a contest asking fans to “predict” what would happen in the commercial. One of the choices was a return appearance from the Coors Light train: “Of the 270,000 entries, 75%-plus said yes. So we knew this was something people wanted,” Colliton said. “Almost 190,000 people said yes. So I think we felt a bit of duty to the world to bring it back into the spotlight.” Read more on Molson Coors’ 2023 Super Bowl ad Asked to describe the feel of this year’s ad, Kevin Weir, Droga5 executive creative director, replied: “majestic and funny.” “This is a beloved piece of advertising history. It’s a beloved part of the brand,” Weir said. “Taking something that so many people loved and made such a big impact on culture and bringing it back, you can’t just do it in a subtle way, right? And so I think ‘unsubtle’ is maybe another word I would use to describe our ad.”

Coors Light Super Bowl ad gives fans a chance to ride on its silver beer train

Featured Stories