Despite being the number one beer in Canada for many years, drinkers mostly associated Coors Light with cold and nothing more in terms of what it brings to the party. Because of this, Coors Light was regularly getting drowned out by its competitors in social. Month after month, Coors Light was seeing its share of conversations doubled and even tripled by Budweiser in social mentions.

Since most Canadian beer drinkers associated the brand simply with its functional benefits, it was crucial for Coors Light to go deeper and adopt a more compelling and creative storytelling approach. The objective was to increase the brand’s cultural relevance and break through the competitive landscape at the same time. With limited budget and no major sponsorships, the task would not be easy.

Tasked with generating mentions of Coors Light on social media, a crucial observation was made: digital-savvy millennials (who drive most conversations on social) are expert curators of their digital identity. Their calculated actions on social media – whether through a carefully selected profile picture or the type of content they create and share – indicated that this core audience of millennials values their digital identity immensely.

And nowhere was their digital identity more important than on Tinder.

Referred to as the dating app for the digital generation, over 50% of Tinder’s 50 million active users are between the ages of 19 and 24, and they’re spending an average of 90 minutes per day on the app. For Coors Light, Tinder was an enormous opportunity to demonstrate its cultural relevance to an audience of social sharers.

The idea for Coors Light’s “#PimpMyProfile” was to offer users a Tinder profile makeover, bringing real value to their lives, while also creating shareable content. With potential dates sizing each other up in split-second decisions, unique and noticeable Tinder profiles were sure to give Coors Light fans a leg up.

The first step was to send out a promoted post on Twitter targeting millennials and anyone else who was talking about Tinder. The post asked people to send in a profile picture and three words that best describe them. Coors Light set to work at directing “pimped out” versions of the submitted profiles pictures that included flying money, rainbows, tigers, fast cars and more. Three words were also used to come up with hilarious Tinder bios that were sure to attract attention. The new profile pic and bio were then sent back to the submitter to be uploaded to Tinder.

Some of these new Tinder profiles even got an additional boost on Twitter, care of Coors Light. Select “pimped” profiles were shared in sponsored posts, geo-targeted to the participant’s hometown and boosted to their age group – this gave their new dating profiles (and Coors Light’s work) additional visibility.

In total, Coors Light created 30 Tinder profiles over a 24-hour period, generating 1.1 million impressions in just one day on Twitter. It also yielded a 386% spike in engagement and a 321% increase in mentions of @CoorsLightCA, compared to six-month averages.

Coors Light managed to take a substantial bite out of the competitive share of voice on the day of the program, generating 312% more mentions of @CoorsLightCA than @BudCanada and @BudLightCA combined, with only $1,000 worth of iStock images, $8,000 of total paid support and one day’s work.