Moosehead Unveils Cracked Canoe

Moosehead announced today a new beer to quench the thirst of an older, more classy, more sophisticated audience. The beer is called Cracked Canoe and sports a completely repackaged look rounding out Moosehead’s product line to satisfy more beer drinkers.

Moosehead’s current branding is a green label, with a crest-like logo with photographic moosehead. The company’s origins speak to that image, originally named the Army & Navy Brewery, Moosehead catered to Nova Scotia’s “thirsty redcoats and jack-tars” (source).

image: from the Moosehead website

The new branding focuses on a can that is unlike any other in the market. Not as large as a tall-boy, but taller and thinner than a regular 12 oz can. The design is completely black with an illustrated white outline of the moosehead.Very minimalist, very sleak. Moosehead claims the packing design reflects the distinctive taste. Their research showed an “overwhelming response to both the black label with white graphic elements as well as the sleek cans.” Though the taste is light enough to enjoy in the backyard on a scorching hot summer day, it’s also upscale enough to be seen drinking in a restaurant like Canoe.

At 3.5% and under 100 calories, Cracked Canoe is not rebranding for its current market but rather chasing an older crowd – “men and women, 30 years of age and older, with above average income and education.”

I’m sure it wasn’t just the name of the new beer that prompted Moosehead to host the media event at Canoe, a particularly swanky restaurant in downtown Toronto. Moosehead’s aim at targeting a more savvy beer drinker certainly hits the mark at Canoe.The sleek black can looked perfectly at home in the hands of young business suits and classily-accessorized skirts. For a light beer, this delivers more than a promise of few calories, it labels the drinker as a premium-seeker who appreciates quality in craftsmanship.

The tagline reinforces that notion. Slow. Moosehead’s TV spot speaks directly to that slowness – your first slow dance, poetry in motion, slow motion of a man and woman catching each other’s glance. It’s not two long-time college buds sitting at a pub ripping labels off their bottles. It’s pure sophisticated sexiness.

The press release says, “its new brand is aimed at an emerging beer-drinking demographic: more mature consumers who want the refreshment of beer but with fewer calories and less alcohol content.”

It certainly fits the bill in my opinion and I can’t wait to see how the branding of this new product sits among both current Moosehead drinkers and that elusive segment of the beer drinking population who needs their beer can to match their well-paid for suit while keeping their waistlines in mind.

Images courtesy of Moosehead’s press kit.