Coors gaining ground with Rocky Mountain campaign

For Coors Light brewer Molson Coors Brewing Co., gone are the days of bikini-clad blondes and Silver Bullet trains. Now, virtually everything Coors Light has a tie in with the mountain range, whether it's the blue mountains on the bottle or the brew's tag line of Rocky Mountain cold refreshment.

"When they tried all this other funny stuff, it was just a flop," said Morningstar analyst Ann Gilpin. "Recently, they've kind of gone back to basics," adding the message is "resonating more with consumers."

Coors Brewing Co. spokeswoman Jenny Volanakis said the company's cold refreshment message has been part of the brand's positioning for some time, but the company "really started to play it up" in advertising and marketing in 2005.

"The brand team did decide to play up the cold refreshment message as a way to differentiate the brand," she said. "The strategy has worked."

Dave Perkins, president of global brand and market development at Molson Coors, said the Denver-based company has been "very, very disciplined" in promoting its Rocky Mountain tagline.

Molson Coors, for example, put a blue "frost brew liner" inside cans of Coors Light to protect the taste of the beer and inked its bottles to turn the Rocky Mountains on the label blue when the beer is at right drinking temperature.

The strategy has appeared to pay off, according to market researcher Information Resources Inc. The firm's data shows Molson Coors growing at a faster pace than all of the top 10 beer brands in the country.

Coors Light dollar sales rose nearly 8 percent in the year ended June 15 to $630.2 million. Bud Light--still the No. 1 beer overall--raked in $1.34 billion in sales for brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos. of St. Louis. But that figure represents growth of just 3 percent from a year ago.

"Bud Light is far and away the biggest light beer," said Nick Lake, vice president of client services in the beverage group at consumer research firm ACNielsen. But "growth rates have not been as strong as Coors Light."