Miller Launches 'Legal Drinking Age' Online Game

Last week, Miller Brewing Company launched an online game, Miller Beer Runner, which mirrors an ad campaign that kicked off this past weekend. The game has players face the usual problems when on a beer run from running through the streets and avoiding obstacles, to dodging ongoing football games and resisting bar temptations to avoiding hard objects like fire hydrants - all with the goal of getting to the store, making a Miller beer purchase and returning home before the halftime clock runs out. Given all the money Miller spends on TV commercials, the video introduction to the game is quite humorous as one of the guys tells his friend he has plenty of time to get the beer because "Hey, it's a commercial. Don't worry about it." In the first four days of the game's release, 360,000 games were played by 165,000 unique users.

And just so no one thought this game was for kids, Miller's press release was peppered with statements like, "Miller Brewing Company's new interactive experience, the "Miller Beer Run," has been embraced by legal-drinking-age consumers" and "To deliver this message to legal-drinking-age consumers, it's increasingly critical that we extend our efforts even further to areas such as digital marketing.

And just so everyone gets proper credit, Skyworks developed and produced the game. Agency.com handled creative supporting digital marketing. Traditional and online brand placements were done by media agency Starcom and digital unit Starcom IP, with sister agency SMG Play also contributing to content development. Young and Rubicam in Chicago created the Miller Lite "Beer Runner" television advertising.