Coors Light | Coors Lights Out | 2023
A commemorative can in 48 hours, sold out in 24, beating the official beer with $0 sponsorship / Coors Light "Coors Lights Out"
In August 2023, a foul ball from Shohei Ohtani smashed an LED module on a Coors Light sign at Citi Field. A black dot of missing pixels appeared right above the can. Normally this would end with a quiet "sorry, we'll fix it," but Rethink turned it into a commemorative can recreating that black square — released just 48 hours later. It's reaction marketing at its finest.
The problem
Baseball is one of America's biggest sports, and Bud Light is MLB's official beer — Coors's biggest rival. Coors Light wasn't an official sponsor and had no contract with any player, which meant they couldn't even say Ohtani's name. But that restriction actually worked in their favor: it left room for fans to draw the black square onto their own cans themselves. People mess around editing logos on X (formerly Twitter) all the time, but actually producing a real can within 48 hours is what turned this into a historic win.
The insight
"Beer should be fun. Fans picked up on the humor in a beer brand's willingness to turn a negative moment into a joke," said Rethink CCO Starkman. The key was choosing to lean into an accident that most brands would try to hide — made possible precisely because there was no official deal with Ohtani. Rethink used a "go then grow" approach: start with a simple social post, watch the reaction, and let consumers tell you in real time how to grow it from there. It's about having the reflexes to move before you know if it'll pay off.
The idea
They produced the commemorative can in 48 hours and added the black square to everything — social posts, billboards, every ad at Angel Stadium. For the game when Ohtani returned home, every screen inside the stadium got the black square too. Thanks to agile digital printing technology, they just needed to drop one black mark onto a regular can. Because it was so simple, it could move so fast.
What happened
The commemorative cans sold out within 24 hours. The actual broken panel sold at auction for over $7,000. The campaign trended at number one, beating out Budweiser, the official beer partner. It became the most-requested beer in Ohtani's home country of Japan, and Coors Light brought cans into the Japanese market for the first time ever. The awards kept coming too: Grand Prix in Out of Home at the Clio Awards 2024, Clio Integrated Gold, Direct Gold, multiple D&AD Golds, and more. Rethink also won Independent Agency of the Year.
Afterthought
This is a win built on a joke taken completely seriously, backed by the execution to turn it into something real within 48 hours. With zero sponsorship budget, they beat out a long-standing official sponsor — proof that creativity, speed, and cultural relevance are what really matter in marketing today. I wondered if this might win at Cannes... and honestly, it looks like it just might. I want to do work that doesn't let moments like this slip by either!
