Miller Lite popularized “light beer” in the 1970s. At this time it was the beer industry’s biggest innovation in a century. They forever changed the type of beer Americans buy, and then they fell into a slump and lost touch with their audience.

The Quake team (while at Juniper Park/TBWA and DDB) worked with the brand to create a new User Interface (UI) and turned ten years of double-digit declines into 17 quarters of growth. The work was adopted across all their markets and was used at every touchpoint.

Core to the work was the creation of the Miller Lite “Minimalist Can,” a graphic device that changed the way the brand spoke to its drinkers and how Miller Lite’s creative partners worked together.

The “Minimalist Can” is an icon that worked at any size and could be morphed into symbols that spoke to people’s passions.

Miller Lite was the first brand ready with content for YouTube’s new 6-second unskippable ad format. The “Minimalist Can” made the creation of the highly branded but engaging content, fast and affordable. The forty-plus animations we produced were viewed hundreds of millions of times.

Miller Lite has been creating branded swag long before it was cool, but unlike lots of novelty swag put out by brands, Miller Lite moves hundreds of thousands of units. Our job was to make the brand more covetable and to create “properties” they could create year after year.

Miller Lite is partners with the great music festivals, and they want to show up as a fan, not a corporate sponsor. So we partnered with concert poster artists to craft unique and authentic artwork for each festival, year after year. The response was terrific, with fans reselling the branded swag online.

St Patrick’s day is the biggest beer day outside of the summer, so how does a brand like Miller Lite ensure it’s top of mind and can compete with green beer on tap? We crafted the iconic “Irish beard guy” graphic, created collectible cans, and built an augmented reality program around it. The program was a huge hit; years later, they are still running this program.

Miller Lite partnered with the NFL to create a best-in-class sponsorship. We wanted the fans to know we were big fans too, so we crafted fan art for each team in Miller Lite’s pen. The artwork for each team was then turned into animations played on stadium jumbotrons and social media. They were crafted as stadium art, promotional swag, gifts, and specialty cans. The fans loved them; teams asked for more and Miller Lite was back in the game.