Coors Light Obstructed Brews turned a baseball fan disappointment into free Coors Light. It invited spectators with an obstructed-view seat at a home opener (maybe from a concrete pillar, a foul pole, an overhang deck blocking the action…) to visit a microsite and upload a photo of their spot, to be scanned using AI. The AI assessed how “less-than-chill” the seat was, to determine how much free Coors Light would be awarded.

A brilliant piece of local knowledge, and an unexpected tactical campaign that rewrote the idea of a brand competition. It showed people that the brand understood their passions and more importantly that it cared. Droga5 New York won three Golds, 1 Silver and 1 Bronze for its effort.

Droga5 New York executive creative director, Tres Colacion, explained how this work seized attention in a sector, sports, flooded with advertising.

The idea must have come from experience as a sports spectator? Is there a personal story about how the idea was dreamed up? How important do you think this kind of relatability was to the campaign?

Tres Colacion: This is a great example of why creative departments, and agencies more broadly, need to be made up of people with a wide variety of life experiences and interests. The idea came from a late-night chat at the office between myself and Will Halstead, one of our creatives who doesn’t even work on Coors but knew we had done some things around sport. We are both big sports fans and within minutes I was already texting the wider team. It was really a no-brainer. Everyone got it instantly.

Carpe diem advertising often has tight timelines. What were the challenges in getting this campaign up and running?

Tres Colacion: The idea was simple, but the execution at scale was trickier. We knew we wanted to target MLB’s (US national baseball league: ed) opening weekend and that started the clock immediately. With any idea that feels this intuitive, the user experience has to feel equally instinctual. Our first call was to Sounds Fun, a creative innovation studio we are close with, and they helped us figure out how to make it tick.

Obstructed Brews sits in a collection of great recent Coors Light work. Tell me about the Coors-Droga5 relationship and how that fosters great work. What are the brand’s challenges? How do you get brave ideas through?

Tres Colacion: It really is a collection of great sporting ideas. The Coors-Droga connection has been built over years and is the result of a lot of strong personal and professional relationships. Those relationships span creative, account, and strategy, and that means we can just pick up the phone or drop something into the group chat when we have a spark.

In terms of business challenges, people are drinking less than ever before. That keeps us up at night, but it also creates the opportunity to do work like this, connecting with consumers where they are and going beyond traditional advertising. From the outside, that may look brave, but for us it is just the natural progression of how advertising needs to evolve to keep up with people.

What was AI’s role in Obstructed Brews?

Tres Colacion: AI was the engine that made Obstructed Brews possible at scale. We geofenced every single Major League Baseball stadium and used computer vision to analyse the view from every seat. Fans could upload a photo of their perspective, and AI would instantly detect whether there was an obstruction like a pole, railing, or guardrail.

The system cross-referenced each submission against stadium layouts and sightline patterns unique to that ballpark, which meant the validation was both fast and accurate. Without AI, building something like this would have been manual, slow, and inconsistent. With AI, we were able to turn a universal fan frustration into a seamless, real-time reward mechanic that worked across the entire league.

How did the agency spread the campaign?

Tres Colacion: We designed it to spread organically, knowing baseball fans love sharing the quirks of their ballpark experience. Fans did a lot of the work for us by posting their obstructed views. On top of that, Coors amplified the campaign through paid social and broadcast integrations, which helped build momentum around what was already a fan-driven conversation.

What do you think are the main reasons for the campaign’s success?

Tres Colacion: At its heart, Obstructed Brews worked because it was an idea that made fans feel seen. Every baseball fan knows what it is like to pay for a ticket and end up with a bad view. By acknowledging that frustration and turning it into a positive moment with a cold Coors Light, we tapped into something deeply relatable.

It showed that Molson Coors may be a big beer company, but it is also made up of people who love the game, understand the culture, and want to share in that experience with fans. The relatability, the timing, and the execution all came together in a way that felt true to both the brand and the fans.