DNA Seattle is reprising the popular Rainier Beer commercials of the ’70s and ’80s in a new campaign to introduce Rainier Summit—the brand’s first light beer.
For newcomers, those iconic spots featured larger-than-life “wild” Rainiers (think beer cans and bottles with legs) roaming the Pacific Northwest wilderness. The new campaign is titled “Rewild the Rainiers.”
DNA chief strategy officer Christine Wise explained: “The domestication of The Rainiers is a metaphor for what’s happening in the Northwest in general and Seattle in particular. We saw an opportunity to reintroduce this legendary brand and to use its brand value as an antidote to the stress of modern-day life and a way to urge people to get out and take advantage of this beautiful place where we live.”
After landing the assignment earlier this year, DNA developed an integrated campaign to refresh the Rainier brand as well as introduce its new light lager—Rainier Summit, “a lighter member of the species.” In the introduction, DNA played off the popularity of live webcams of animal nests with a five-day livestream of a larger-than-life nest filled with mysterious Rainier eggs.
The nest was tended by a host of quirky characters, including an eagle, Sasquatch, “beer-barians” and even the Pike Place Market fish throwers. The livestream culminated with the eggs hatching, revealing giant cans of Rainier Summit, which were celebrated and then excitedly guzzled by all the visiting creatures.
Unlike the vintage campaign, there’s no traditional television in the mix. Besides the livestream intro, it includes digital video, social and cinema ads and point-of-sale posters, featuring unsuspecting Rainier cans being captured in offices, gyms and on the streets, before being “rewilded” back to the Northwest wilderness.
The entire campaign was produced in-house at DNA by its new content and production group called Petting Zoo, led by Gabe Hajiani, a former partner at the defunct Wexley School for Girls.
DNA CEO Alan Brown wrote us a note to add that “Petting Zoo is really jamming. We not only finished this work for Rainier, but we did some global work for Cray (before the announcement of its $1.5 billion sale to HP Enterprise) and we’re in the middle of a production for Taco Time.”
See this related article on Crosscut.com:
Just a minor correction to your article on the “Rewilding the Rainiers”. In the article you report that this is a “campaign to introduce Rainier Summit—the brand’s first light beer”. In 1968, when I was with Wells, Rich, and Greene and prior to my move to McCann Erickson Seattle, we were preparing to introduce a Rainier product on each side of their standard Rainier Light. Thus, the first introduction to a light beer by Rainier was Rainier Light-Light. The “heavier” beer in the blue label was Rainier Not-So-Light.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/ranier-can-and-bottle-poster.272046/
I tried to copy and paste a picture of the bottles, but the space you have wouldn’t accept it. So, the above link will take any interested Rainier historians to a site that shows them.
Here’s to the continuation for your fight for truth in journalism 🙂
Pax
Duane
‘
Comments are closed.