On the latest episode of the Brand Builder’s Playbook, Molson Coors CMO Sophia Colucci shared how her team develops brands that people genuinely want to connect with and how those efforts translate into measurable business results. Her strategy combines curiosity, consistency, and creativity, ensuring that every initiative evokes real emotion.
Alignment is always Colucci’s starting point. Molson Coors ensures its marketing has a focused mandate: to build magnetic brands and link every campaign brief directly to outcomes. This clarity means that every project, from national campaigns to local events, supports the same objective. Brand health drives market share, which in turn energizes growth across the board.
Building Emotional Connection That Lasts
Genuine brand love extends beyond simple recognition. It forms an emotional bond, making people proud to be associated with a product. This is particularly significant in industries like beer, where holding a branded can acts as a public statement of identity. The same principle applies across sectors, wherever products help consumers express themselves.
While foundational brand principles remain unchanged, such as knowing your consumer, your brand’s meaning, and its place in people’s lives, the ways brands connect keep evolving. Television remains influential for live events, but new avenues like creator partnerships, cultural moments, and real-time involvement have become equally important. Even as channels shift, a consistent brand strategy remains essential.
When product features and pricing converge, emotional connection becomes the primary differentiator. Take Peroni, for example; its growth outpaces other premium options because it stands for more than just quality taste. Peroni symbolizes confidence, sophistication, and style, traits consumers value as much as the beverage itself. This distinctive meaning fuels true pricing power.
A Living Legacy: Coors Banquet
Coors Banquet stands as a testament to enduring brand love, thriving after 150 years with five consecutive years of sales gains and sixteen straight quarters of market share growth. Its appeal spans generations, as both loyal longtime drinkers and new, legal-age Gen Z consumers embrace the brand. The evidence is clear at cultural events like Lollapalooza, where Coors Banquet shirts flood the crowd despite the lack of official sponsorship.
This visible loyalty aligns with data, as fans wearing Banquet merchandise are five times more likely to purchase the beer. Staying true to its core, the team welcomes modern relevance through collaborations such as Yellowstone appearances and a partnership with Wrangler for “beer-washed” jeans. The result is a classic brand that feels as current as ever.
Additionally, Molson Coors has adapted to expanding consumer choices and trends that influence behavior like moderation and cannabis by diversifying its offerings. Fast-growing non-alcoholic options like Blue Moon NA and Peroni 0.0 ensure the brand retains relevance without alcohol. Similarly, a partnership with Fever Tree extends the company’s reach into upscale mixers, meeting evolving consumer preferences.
Proving the Power of Brand Love
Colucci’s team views brand love as both an art and a science. They track short-term indicators such as household penetration, buy rate, and social engagement to assess how ideas resonate culturally. Even a small creative tweak, like moving player names on PWHL jerseys to remain visible beneath hair, triggered meaningful social reaction and demonstrated the power of empathetic design.
Long-term, Molson Coors uses BERA’s Brand Equity Score and Consideration metrics. Their findings show consideration is key for emerging brands like Topo Chico Hard Seltzer, while established names such as Coors Light benefit more from brand equity. Linking these metrics to revenue finally gives brand love a clear financial impact.
Colucci also sees artificial intelligence as an enabler that improves speed and execution while keeping creativity in human hands. By handling routine tasks, AI allows marketing teams to focus on the instincts and ideas that drive exceptional campaigns.
Sophia’s Three Rules for Brand Love
- Know why consumers love your brand. Don’t just focus on who your consumers are, but understand the emotional significance your brand holds in their lives.
- Remain relentlessly consistent. The best brands, like the best friends, are dependable and grounded in a clear identity.
- Create work that inspires emotion. The goal goes beyond getting attention; true advocacy is sparked by making people feel something, whether it is humor, nostalgia, or inspiration.
When Brand Love Scales
Brands with authentic badge value become woven into personal and cultural identity. Coors Banquet’s seamless fit with the renewed interest in western and workwear culture, alongside names like Carhartt, Wrangler, and Ford, exemplifies this. Merchandise, meaning, and product all reinforce one another, demonstrating how genuine brand love deepens and multiplies over time.
Your next four steps
- Quantify brand love. Pair brand equity and consideration data with sales results to prove the financial link. Drop any metric that fails to predict behavior.
- Plan at two speeds. Combine large-scale moments for reach with smaller cultural drops that connect with niche communities. Give every initiative one owner and one clear objective.
- Close the loop. Track new-to-brand customers, their lifetime value, and how acquisition channels affect retention. Use what you learn to focus lifecycle marketing on experience rather than discounts.
- Invest in taste. Hire people who live the culture your brand touches and keep a weekly session devoted to what the team is seeing in the world.
Brand love is not just a slogan, it’s a system built on truth, consistency, and measurement. When you know who you are and connect emotion to performance, you turn attention into momentum that lasts.
