Mike’s Campaign Adopts ‘Guess What Happens Next’ Suspense

It is fairly common for advertisers, to make separate versions of the same commercial, for their targeted audience, Examples of commercials released by Sony Bravia Television sets, for men and women and ad spots for Orbitz and Levi’s jeans, had ads for straight and gay men.

This time the ads have a variation for the same commercial. However, each commercial is aimed at the same audience. Mike’s Hard Lemonade line of flavored malt beverages is introducing a series of funny commercials that all begin similarly but then change directions to reach different ending destinations.

A Mike advertisement for golf balls, has three different endings, a prisoner digs his way out of jail, to come out on to a golf course, in another version, the golf balls metamorphose into lotto balls for a mock lottery that the friends conduct and finally, a glass eye ball and a pirate with an eye-patch end up on the golf course.

This concept has been designed to keep in mind the short attention span of men and women between 21 and 34, to keep them guessing what the end will be like and to prevent them from changing channels in the middle of a spot. Marketers and media companies have discovered that, viewers, especially the youth, prefer to avoid commercials.

Andy Horrow, chief marketing officer for Mike’s Hard Lemonade at the Chicago office of the Mark Anthony Group of Companies said, that Mike’s target is “an audience that gets bored easily, and we do have to work harder to stand out.”

The unusual nature of the ads is supposed to emphasize that preferring a Mike’s over a beer is “an unconventional choice,” he said. The theme of the campaign has the same intention: “Always different. Always refreshing.”

Harrow said that the ads would help them to reconnect with their ‘irreverent authenticity.’  He said, “To be honest, I think we’d become almost too functional recently in talking about Mike’s as an alternative to beer. Beer is always going to be a reference point for us, but by doing what we did we lost our voice, we lost our personality.”

Mike’s is the leader in the flavored mallet beverage category, outselling most other brands, but the number-one status has not been reflected in their recent ads, which convey a message of it being an also-ran, rather than, the best.

They have tried various agencies and Grey New York is the fourth in four years. The company believes that it is “is absolutely the right strategic and creative partner to take us forward.” “I one hundred percent expect we won’t” change creative agencies again soon, and for everyone’s sake, I hope we don’t,” said Harrow, its Chief Marketing Officer.

It seems that all at Mike’s are determined that this time their results show a different ending.