By Greg Hudson

Fair warning: this story will include an abundance of Mikes.

With Mike Vernon, former goalie for the Calgary Flames, set to be inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame this month in November 13, Mike’s Hard wanted to find a unique way to celebrate. The brand didn’t have to look too far for inspiration.

“Sometimes marketers can overthink things,” Mike D’Agostini, head of marketing for all Beyond Beer products at AB inBev, tells Media in Canada. “But this one wasn’t complicated. It was right on our can.”

The idea was simple and cheeky: Mikes Hard — the popular alcoholic lemonade brand — would celebrate Mike Vernon’s return to Calgary and his Hall of Fame induction by getting a bunch of people together who all happened to be named Mike.

“We were looking for legal-drinking-age Mikes, who love hockey and would be free on Nov. 1. We wanted to be fair, so we allowed Mike-adjacent names, too.” D’Agostini says. “We had a couple of Michelles. But ultimately, we were looking for Flames fans.”

Keeping the details intentionally vague to build interest, the brand sent out its Mike-call on October 25 with a mix of OOH near the Saddledome and around the city, as well as a splashy ad in The Calgary Herald, and some spots on Sportsnet, asking for consumers names Mike to “help Calgary” and scan a QR code.

“This is the type of activation we love to do. We have a long standing partnership with the Calgary Flames and we’re always looking for hooks and opportunities to celebrate them, their players, their team,” D’Agostini says. “We also can’t underestimate the power of the Flames. We partnered with them on social to get people. Obviously, they have three-plus million followers, so it was a key part of the plan.”

On the night of the game, out of about 1,200 respondents, 60 Mikes were given tickets to sit in the exclusive “Mike Cheering” section in the lower bowl to help support Vernon, who won one of his two Stanley Cups with the Flames back in 1989. The activation at the game included free drinks, signage, and Mike Vernon himself.

“From a brand perspective we wanted to do two things: we wanted to obviously not take away from the spotlight on Mike Vernon. But, we also wanted to leverage that spotlight to have our brand be at the forefront of the conversation around it. There were two goals driving conversation around this as well as signups and data acquisition.”

Nominally, the only demographic Mike’s Hard was aiming for was hockey fans named Mike. But, since Michael was among the most popular baby names until 1998 (at least in the U.S.), it matches up pretty well with Mike Hard’s key demo: People in their 30s, especially in rural markets.

“This is bang on what we want to be doing and how we wanted to bring it to life. It is it is very much one of those nice coincidences that our name on our can ties directly to our target in the market,” he says.

Dentsu handled the media buy, while creative and experiential was supported by Salt XC, and Veritas led public relations.

Update: The headline to this story was adjusted after the newsletter was published to replace the word “army” with “gaggle”