It’s Miller Time! With MillerCoors CCO Pete Marino
If you’re a beer fan, this is a great time to be alive. There’s more craft brewing going on than ever before and that means a broader variety of types and styles to enjoy. Even legacy brewers are getting into the craft game. It’s a “golden” age.
MillerCoors is among those that have seized on this trend, but its CCO Pete Marino was recently confronted with a problem to which many communicators can relate. Late on a Friday night, a competitor published an inflammatory Op-ed in TheNew York Times arguing that the entrance of large brewers into the craft market heralded the end of the craft movement. The question for Pete’s team wasn’t so much what to say, but how and where to say it.
“We had a choice to make in terms of how we wanted to respond, if at all,” says Marino in the latest New CCO podcast. “We re-launched our blog about 18 months ago to really focus on stories of our people, and talk about our company and its heritage. We wanted to start thinking about how we can create our own news channel…Jim Koch’s Op-ed gave us the perfect opportunity to launch it.”
Pete discusses how the company’s digital platforms, including their corporate blog and a video channel, have helped the brand achieve greater transparency by providing accurate information to stakeholders, and to shape the narrative in a proactive way. The opportunity for communicators to create value for the enterprise by developing and using digital channels to tell the brand’s story has never been greater, or more critical.
“The amount of time that companies have to react in the moment to stories that they’re facing, or to pressures that they’re facing, and to do it the right way and with transparency, has dramatically shifted,” Pete adds. “And the impact that communications has on the overall business, from the board level to the CEO’s office on down, has dramatically shifted, making our jobs and our roles even more important than they’ve ever been.”
Find our latest episode with Pete here, and if you missed them, check out interviews with Corey duBrowa, former CCO of Starbucks, and Catherine Blades of Aflac.