Cold Ones Non-Alcoholic Brew Embraces 'Irresponsibility'

Behaving responsibly during a night out with friends … where’s the satisfaction in that?

Cold Ones, a non-alcoholic beer from Canada, prefers to focus on fun, fun, fun, rather than sober safety messages, in a teaser campaign from Wunderman Thompson.

The startup urges folks to pound a few down and enjoy themselves “irresponsibly.” They shouldn’t get too out of hand, of course. But partying with clear-headed confidence (thanks to the product’s 0.0% ABV) is just fine.

“The best thing about beer has never been the alcohol, it’s the ritual,” says Tom McCole, co-founder of Cold Ones. “We wanted to capture the spirit of the memories people associate with beer and prove that they were never about the alcohol after all.”

That’s debatable, of course. Let’s be honest: folks like getting a buzz on from time to time. Some more so, and more often, than others.

Still, it’s a positioning that could resonate, in the same lane as recent work from Heineken 0.0, but without the traffic safety tie-in. For Cold Ones, the accent is 100 percent on fun, which does feel a bit different.

“We had the opportunity to break all of the rules that normally exist when you’re marketing beer by becoming the first irresponsible’ non-alcoholic brand,” says Ari Elkouby, CCO at Wunderman Thompson Canada.

Currently securing distribution, Cold Ones debuts in stores later this year.