• by Aaron Baar , April 7, 2010

Watch out, Sam Adams. Take a back seat, Most Interesting Man in the World. There's a new beer mascot in town: Keith Stone.

MillerCoors brand Keystone Light is introducing a new spokescharacter, Keith Stone, in a national advertising campaign targeting young males. The character, a Jack Black-esque hero, is meant to embody the brand's "Always Smooth" positioning.

"He's always smoothing over every situation," Keystone Light brand manager Elina Maniec tells Marketing Daily. "He also embodies who we're targeting. He's a confident guy. He likes to hang out with friends. He's very sociable."

In two television advertisements developed by Saatchi & Saatchi in New York, Stone plays the role of everyday hero, with a twist. In one ad, stone encounters an elderly woman in distress because her "Kiki" is stuck in a tree. After asking the woman to hold his 30-pack of Keystone Light ("Hold my 'Stones'," he says), the character climbs a ladder to safely rescue an attractive twenty-something woman (the other woman's granddaughter) and both praise his smoothness.

A second spot has Stone interrupting a bride's tearful phone call at a convenience store with a giant meat snack. In doing so, he assures the woman that everything will be fine for her big day, again to acknowledgement of his smoothness.

The campaign is a bit of a departure from the brand's previous positioning, which carried the line, "Always Smooth. Even when you're not." That campaign featured people getting into uncomfortable situations (such as knocking over a row of shelves in a convenience store to impress a pretty girl), which wound up detracting from the brand's message, Maniec says.

"We realized we had an opportunity to improve our branding while reinforcing our 'Always Smooth' message," she says. "We wanted to flip it around so that Keystone Light is Always Smooth and we wanted to make sure our ads were focused on that."

In addition to the television commercials, which will run on male-oriented programming and networks such as Comedy Central and FX, the brewer will be running radio, digital and out-of-home ads. Keystone Light will also add content to its Facebook page and the video Web site Funny or Die. "We're working with [Funny or Die] to create sketches for Keith Stone," Maniec says. "We're working with them to feed the brand and what the character is all about. ... You'll see Keith Stone wherever there's a situation that needs to be smoothed over."