Molson Canadian has been part of hockey in Canada for a very long time. The connection between the country’s iconic lager and its most-loved sport is well established. The 2014/2015 hockey season began with a new challenge: an entirely new media landscape emerged with Rogers Media taking over NHL broadcasts from CBC. The challenge was that very little had been defined regarding how brand sponsorships could be approached. We had a blank sheet of ice to make our own.

For the 2013/2014 season we launched the "Anything for Hockey" initiative, aimed at people we dubbed the "irrationally hockey obsessed." We offered NHL experiences to fans who demonstrated their love of the game through extreme acts. For the 2014/2015 hockey plan, we believed the brand had to do the same thing we’d asked of our target: demonstrate our true commitment to the sport. We couldn’t just say we loved hockey – we had to prove it.

To achieve this, Molson did something never before done: we created the most spectacular rink on earth, a perfect sheet of ice hidden in the Rocky Mountains. It’s a setting like no other, at 8,500 ft. To realize the idea’s full potential we needed the assistance of the NHL and Rogers, our key partners.

Phase one introduced the rink through a video teaser and invited people to tell us what they do for the game. Phase two was a video of a father who moved his family from Estonia to Canada to give his son a shot at a professional career. It ended with an invitation for other irrationally hockey obsessed fans to tell us what they had done for the game for their chance to play in the most epic setting imaginable.

We chose 10 players from the deluge of remarkable stories that came in and took them (and the Molson Canadian Beer Fridge) to the mountain. The NHL provided former referee Don Van Massenhoven to officiate and the Stanley Cup made an unforgettable appearance at the game, flown in dangling from a helicopter.

The campaign started in broadcast and social media, and extended on NHL broadcasts and social hockey properties through profiles of each player’s backstory and their experience on the rink (produced by Rogers). This continued throughout the hockey season, getting bigger and reaching further in terms of engagement and fan appeal.

We’ll never know how many goose bumps were created when Canadians saw the rink, but we do know we achieved the business results we sought. More than 500,000 minutes of content were watched on YouTube. #AnythingForHockey Facebook posts generated 75 million impressions, and were shared more than 250,000 times.

Tracking confirmed Molson Canadian is the preferred beer to drink while watching hockey: among hockey fans it was preferred to Budweiser two to one. Purchase intent increased from 30% to 47% over the course of the season, and 83% of fans agreed that it is THE beer of hockey.