Corona Cero is riding the wave of its global World Surf League partnership onto the Canadian slopes.
The Labatt Breweries brand announced recently it was the official partner of Canada Snowboard and the Canada Snowboard National Team, sponsoring athletes ahead of 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan, Italy. The first installation was held at The Lake Louise Ski Resort and Summer Gondola, Whistler Blackcomb and Station Mont Tremblant on March 29 and featured Canada’s top snowboarders.
To amplify its message, Corona Cero executed a multi-channel approach, with out-of-home placements set up along major routes to ski destinations and paid social. The non-alcoholic beer brand also engaged its media AOR Starcom, “ensuring a data-driven and performance-oriented media strategy tailored to our Canadian market.” Anomaly provided creative and Veritas led production support.
Mike D’Agostini, head of above core marketing for Labatt Breweries of Canada, tells Media in Canada that while Corona globally aligns with surfing, snowboarding is its natural counterpart in Canada.
“To localize this connection in way that is only natural to Corona, we mirrored the creative treatment of our surf heritage, but with a distinct winter spin – swapping snowboards in place of surfboards, all while leveraging the visual equity of the iconic Corona lime ritual,” D’Agostini says. “Most importantly, we wanted to ensure how we captured the campaign’s key visual was authentic to both Corona and the sport.”
To achieve that, Corona partnered with a leading snowboarding media platform, King Snow, to capture the campaign imagery, which features a snowboarder and a surfer side-by-side, with the boards replacing the lime that appears in Corona ads.
As part of the Publicis network – which also led the global World Surf League announcement – Starcom enabled Corona to leverage the scale and strategic expertise of the agency’s broader media ecosystem, while ensuring localized execution that resonates with Canadian consumers, D’Agostini adds.
“Our media investment strategy is intentionally designed to reach our target audience in a meaningful way – LDA+ consumers with a passion for skiing and snowboarding in key mountain partner locations,” he explains. “While our amplification budget remains consistent with previous campaigns, the channel mix evolved to prioritize these high-impact OOH touchpoints. For similar activations, we have historically leveraged Meta for boosted content; however, in this case, our emphasis was on intercepting consumers.”
By targeting this highly engaged outdoor community, Corona is reinforcing the brand’s “Outside We Live” platform, D’Agostini says.
Beyond immediate consumer engagement, the campaign reflects a larger strategic vision: aligning Corona Cero with national competitive sports platforms, both locally through Canada Snowboard and globally through continuing partnerships, D’Agostini explains. “As we look ahead to the world’s most prominent winter sporting event in early 2026, fostering deeper connections within the snow sports community will further entrench Corona as a brand synonymous with both casual and elite outdoor lifestyles.”
