Why an Australian whisky wants to take down Canada’s Olympians

Canada and Australia are both far-flung members of the British Commonwealth, with a common tongue, a similar GDP, relatively small populations occupying a large land mass, and a love of beer and humour. They’ve long been considered two sides of the same coin. (Aside from the weather, which, yes, is better down there.)

But Australian whisky brand Coastal Stone has abruptly turned on Canada and its Olympians in the lead-up to the Paris Games. Claiming it has 'a score to settle', the brand is calling out Canada’s “weak as piss” whisky, and has declared itself the 'Official Spirit of Crushing Canada’s Spirit'.

As part of the 'Crushing CANada' campaign to launch its new Coastal Stone Whisky & Dry ready-to-drink  product, Coastal Stone is pledging to provide every member of the Australian team able to 'crush' a Canadian in Paris with a year’s supply of its products, plus a medal made from a crushed can of Canadian Club (which is listed as 'Aluminum Medal Supplier' in the campaign’s credits).

“It doesn't matter if they finish first or 15th, as long as they manage to make a Canadian taste the bitterness of defeat,” said a Coastal Stone spokesperson in an email interview with Campaign.

The Games and the Olympic Rings are never explicitly mentioned or shown because Coastal Stone is not among the Australian Olympic Committee’s official partners.

The campaign stems from Canadian Club’s dominance in Australia’s $1.2 billion RTD spirits category. “[I]t’s not even close,” they said. “With their immense media/marketing spend, saturated distribution, and prohibitive on-tap venue agreements, it's almost impossible for a local distillery to compete.”

Canadian Club is still made at the Walkerville Distillery in Windsor, but the brand is actually now Japanese-owned, having been acquired by the global spirits behemoth Suntory in 2014. But that hasn’t stopped Coastal Stone from taking what it’s calling a “battle of the beverages” to the world’s biggest sporting stage in an attempt to engage sports-obsessed Aussies. 

The campaign, which is running across social media and out-of-home in Australia throughout July and August, features a can of Coastal Stone’s new RTD product atop a crushed can of its Canada Dry competitor, accompanied by headlines like, 'Over Canada? Drink Australian', 'Canada’s going to melt in France', and 'Weak as piss. And that’s just their can'.

The campaign is by Sydney agency Supersolid, whose creative director Alex Newman is a dual Canadian-Australian citizen who graduated from OCAD University and worked at Proximity and JWT before moving to Australia nearly a decade ago.

Newman jokingly acknowledged that he’s 'pretty sure' the Canadian government will revoke his citizenship for the campaign. “[B]ut it will all be worth it if we can prevent Australians from drinking any more piss-weak Canadian whisky. Sorry.”

While stressing that Coastal Stone has no personal animosity towards Canada or Canadians, the spokesperson said that this is simply business. “[O]ur campaign objective is simple,” they said. “We’re not going to stop until we’ve rid our Great Southern Land of piss-weak Canadian whisky once and for all.”

Given the huge discrepancy between Australia and Canada in the Summer Games (46 medals, including 17 golds for Australia in the 2020 Tokyo Games; 24, including seven gold, for Canada) this is a bit of a mismatch.

But we suspect that Canada’s winter athletes will reclaim many of those 'medals' in Italy two years from now.