San Diego-based hard kombucha and canned cocktail maker JuneShine will debut its first Super Bowl commercial Sunday in its home market of San Diego, encouraging watchers of the Big Game to “please earth responsibly.”
The 30-second regional ad is a take on the BBC series Planet Earth and features JuneShine’s Classic Tequila Margarita ready-to-drink (RTD) canned cocktail. The ad buy – JuneShine’s largest media investment to date – is also the first Super Bowl spot for 1% for the Planet, which requires partner businesses like JuneShine to commit at least 1% of sales to environmental non-profits.
“We’re trying to exist in this weird collision between alcohol and parties and fun, and honesty, transparency, sustainability [and] do-goodery; usually those are very separate,” JuneShine co-founder and CMO Forrest Dein told Brewbound. “When there’s a commercial that’s about sustainability, it’s dramatic and sad music and it leaves you questioning some existential crisis. Or, you’ve got alcohol commercials that are the very typical format, fun – maybe a little bit of inspiration – but comedy and lighthearted, ‘have a beer.’”
Super Bowl LVII will take place Sunday at 6:30 p.m. ET/3:30 p.m. PT. The Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs will compete for the championship at State Farm Arena in Glendale, Arizona.
The commercial itself, created with Humanaut creative agency, promotes the National Forest Foundation (NFF) and reforestation efforts. JuneShine has committed to donating 1% of its canned cocktail sales from February through March to the NFF, which will help support the planting of at least 10,000 new trees, according to a press release.
JuneShine’s commercial is scheduled to play after the second quarter of Sunday’s game, and before Rihanna’s half-time show – a strategic move aimed at reaching more women viewers. JuneShine’s consumer base, particularly for its hard kombucha, is between 65%-70% female, Dein said.
About 70% of San Diego’s legal-drinking-age consumers tune in for the Super Bowl each year, according to Dein. The cost of the spot was in the “low-six-figure range,” a “significant percentage” of JuneShine’s budget, but the potential reach it could have for the company’s main consumer base was worth it, Dein said.
“To reach that many people in San Diego through any other channel would be very difficult to do,” Dein said.
JuneShine was also able to leverage the commercial with its retail partners ahead of spring resets, which included getting stacks of JuneShine’s Margarita variety pack (launched February 1) and hard kombucha variety packs at Kroger locations, as part of a “Less Sugar, More Tailgates” campaign.
“If we went in there without this and asked for a stack during February, they’d be like ‘Nope, this is only Miller and A-B [Anheuser-Busch] space,’” Dein said.
Sunday’s spot will be the first of three similar JuneShine commercials that will air in Southern California throughout 2023. A second spot will be broadcast in the coming months featuring JuneShine’s Midnight Painkiller hard kombucha and encouraging consumers to save honey bees. The third spot will highlight JuneShine’s canned cocktails and will support oceans and sea turtles.
All three campaigns will also be promoted by JuneShine’s celebrity ambassadors, including musical artist Diplo, comedian Whitney Cummings, YouTuber Cody Ko, actor and professional skateboard Evan Mock and professional diver Kimi Werner.
“While we’re only spending in SoCal, we want it to feel national, so the ambassadors will all be posting it and sharing it,” Dein said. “So we might end up reaching just as many people through that channel as we do through that Super Bowl spot.”
Watch the full commercial above.