As a sponsor of Team USA since the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Paris, Michelob Ultra’s approach to the Games spans multiple sports and athletes. But ahead of the Games in Italy next month, the beer brand is lacing up its ice skates as it prepares to throw its might behind hockey.
To put it simply, the sport is “a natural place for us,” SVP of marketing Ricardo Marques told Marketing Brew: Michelob Ultra is now a sponsor of USA Hockey, and has relationships with teams like the Boston Bruins, while fellow AB InBev brand Bud Light is the official beer of the NHL. Plus, hockey’s star has been on the rise, Marques said, pointing to the ratings success of last year’s 4 Nations tournament. Beyond that, there is some evidence of a potential Heated Rivalry effect on NHL fandom.
With the Winter Games set to feature NHL players for the first time since 2014, Michelob Ultra is planning for a hockey miracle, as well as some additional activations, to boost its sales, market share, and overall association with Team USA in the run-up to LA28.
Michelob on ice
To leverage its partnership with Team USA and spark excitement for Milano Cortina, Michelob Ultra is first hosting a fan event based on the Miracle on Ice game from the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York, when a young US men’s team upset the four-time defending gold medalist team from the Soviet Union.
The event, set for Jan. 15 at the Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid, is meant to re-create the game, complete with holograms, projections on the ice, items from the hockey archive, previously unseen footage, and appearances from legends like 1980 Olympic goaltender Jim Craig.
Another key element of the brand’s Milano Cortina campaign is its Team USA–branded packaging, which features the flag and Olympic rings, Marques said. Michelob Ultra sold special-edition Olympic packs for the last Summer Games, which served the brand well, he said.
“Those rings are incredibly powerful,” Marques said. “It’s an incredibly powerful asset when you put those marks on your pack. It goes a long way with fans.”
Power play
As part of its work with USA Hockey and Team USA, Michelob Ultra is also sponsoring several athletes, including brothers Brady and Matthew Tkachuk, who both play in the NHL and are set to make their Olympic debuts on the US men’s ice hockey team this year.
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In addition to the Tkachuks, Michelob Ultra partnered with alpine skier Breezy Johnson, bobsledder Kaysha Love, and speedskater Kristen Santos-Griswold. The athletes, all members of Team USA, are set to appear in the brand’s Olympic campaign materials spanning OOH, digital, and broadcast ads, inclusive of a more than 155-unit media buy with NBC Sports, according to Marques. The multisport strategy is another that he said his team first put into practice at the Paris Games.
“We had what I like to call our Avengers, Team Ultra, for the Olympics, and we’re replicating that approach,” he said, later adding that the athletes were selected to help provide the brand with access to a broad range of personalities and sports beyond hockey.
The long game
The immediate goal of the brand’s efforts around Milano Cortina is to start off strong in a busy sports year by driving sales and gaining market share, Marques said, especially in parts of the country where Michelob Ultra has the most room for growth, which is where he’s hoping the hockey efforts will prove especially successful.
“One of the things that I really like about hockey is the fact that it’s most popular in markets where Ultra is under-indexing today,” Marques said.
He also has some long-term goals for the Team USA partnership, such as building brand association with the team in “meaningful ways that go beyond the traditional sponsorship assets,” seeing as the deal is set to last through LA28, when the Olympics come stateside and present even more marketing opportunities for American brands.
“We go full-on [with LA28] immediately after we wrap this Winter Olympics,” Marques said. “It takes place, obviously, right here at home, so it’s going to be Paris times 10 in terms of what it means for us in terms of impact.”
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