The Beer Store's 2023 'Whatever the Case May Be' campaign by King Ursa used comedic town portraits across Ontario to champion value and convenience at 420+
How The Beer Store Turned Ontario Towns Into a Summer Beer Campaign
The Beer Store's 2023 "Whatever the Case May Be" campaign is a comedic television and video advertising effort created by Toronto agency King Ursa that celebrates Ontario towns and communities to communicate the retailer's value, convenience, and province-wide reach across more than 420 locations in Canada, according to Little Black Book.
Launching in time for the May 2-4 long weekend in 2023 and running throughout the summer, the campaign marks the second year of the "Whatever the Case May Be" brand platform, which King Ursa first introduced in 2022, according to Kingursa. Where the inaugural execution focused on the diversity of people who shop at The Beer Store, the 2023 iteration shifts its lens outward to the communities themselves. Characters from Ontario towns including Beaverton, Bobcaygeon, Hamilton, and Sault Ste. Marie appear in a series of comedic video ads, each making the case — with warmth and local pride — that their neighbourhood Beer Store delivers unmatched value and convenience.
The campaign speaks directly to The Beer Store's core proposition: that across Ontario, from large cities like Hamilton to smaller communities like Bobcaygeon and Sault Ste. Marie, a Beer Store location is always close by and always competitively priced. As Ozzie Ahmed, Vice President of Retail at The Beer Store, stated in campaign materials published by Clapboard: "With over 420 locations across the province, we have a store near you. Our incredible employees are eager to serve Ontarians with the best value we can." The campaign targets existing customers in Ontario's beverage-alcohol market by reinforcing familiarity and affinity rather than chasing new category entrants, a deliberate strategic repositioning from the platform's first year.
The Beer Store operates in one of Canada's most closely regulated and competitive beverage-alcohol retail environments. According to the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, The Beer Store accounted for 41.3% of Ontario beverage-alcohol volume in fiscal 2023, compared with 51.0% for the LCBO — a gap that reflects years of gradual market share erosion as Ontario's retail landscape has evolved. When direct delivery to licensed establishments is included, the picture shifts: per the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, The Beer Store held 61.6% of that combined volume versus 31.3% for the LCBO, underscoring the retailer's continued strength in the licensed hospitality channel even as its consumer-facing retail share faces pressure.
The broader market context matters. The LCBO reported approximately C$7.41 billion in gross alcohol sales across Ontario in fiscal 2022–23. Within that figure, beer sales declined approximately 1% year over year, while ready-to-drink products grew 6.8% and represented 9.1% of alcohol revenue, according to the LCBO's annual report. That category drift — away from traditional beer formats and toward RTDs, hard seltzers, and radlers — creates a strategic imperative for The Beer Store to consolidate loyalty among its existing beer-drinking base rather than cede ground to format trends.
The 2023 "Whatever the Case May Be" campaign responds to that pressure by doubling down on emotional and geographic belonging. Rather than competing head-to-head with LCBO on assortment breadth or with independent brewery retail stores on craft cachet, King Ursa's creative strategy positions The Beer Store as the retailer that is embedded in Ontario communities — from Sault Ste, according to Campaigncanada Ca. Marie in the north to Hamilton in the south — in a way that neither the LCBO nor boutique brewery retailers can replicate at scale. As reported by Campaign Canada, King Ursa was appointed The Beer Store's agency of record in November 2021, giving the agency time to build a platform rooted in community rather than product before releasing the first campaign in 2022, according to Glossyinc.
Grant Cleland serves as Executive Creative Director at King Ursa and is the named creative lead on the "Whatever the Case May Be" campaign. His stated intent, as published by Clapboard, frames the entire creative approach: "This campaign is about connecting The Beer Store to the communities they've been embedded in for generations and doing it with a smile." That phrase — doing it with a smile — is not incidental. Humour is the campaign's primary creative instrument, and it is deployed with specificity rather than broad comedic generality.
Each video ad is built around a named Ontario community. Bobcaygeon, Sault Ste. Marie, Hamilton, and Beaverton each receive their own character-driven portrait, with local residents or character types speaking directly to camera about their Beer Store. The comedic tone is warm and self-aware, allowing audiences in those communities to recognise themselves without feeling mocked. This is a precise tonal calibration: too arch and the campaign alienates the very customers it courts; too earnest and it loses the entertainment value that earns repeat viewing.
Cleland also articulated the geographic ambition behind the creative in materials published by Clapboard: "From Sarnia to Red Lake — 535 km northwest of Thunder Bay — nobody comes close to covering the geography The Beer Store does, and we wanted to have fun with that." That scale of coverage becomes a creative asset rather than merely an operational fact. By naming specific places — Bobcaygeon, Sault Ste. Marie, Hamilton — the campaign transforms a logistical network of more than 420 Ontario locations into a series of human stories. Media placement on television ensured that Ontario audiences encountered characters from communities they recognise, lending the humour an additional layer of local resonance. According to Trendhunter, the campaign was published and circulating in Canada in June 2023, following its launch ahead of the May 2-4 weekend.
No independently verified performance data — such as sales lift figures, television reach metrics, or brand tracking results — for the 2023 "Whatever the Case May Be" campaign is publicly available at the time of publication. The absence of disclosed metrics is consistent with standard practice among Canadian grocery and beverage-alcohol retailers, which rarely publish campaign-level commercial outcomes.
Structurally, however, the campaign is built for effectiveness against its stated objectives. By anchoring each execution to a named Ontario community — including Bobcaygeon, Sault Ste. Marie, and Hamilton — the creative maximises local relevance within a mass-reach television buy, a combination that research in advertising effectiveness consistently identifies as a driver of brand recall. The humour-led tone reduces resistance in a category where price comparison is the default consumer behaviour, allowing The Beer Store to frame value as a reason to feel good rather than merely a transactional claim.
The platform's continuity across two years — 2022 and 2023 — also signals organisational confidence in the King Ursa creative direction. Sustained platform investment typically produces compounding brand equity effects that single-year campaigns cannot replicate. Clapboard rates the 2023 "Whatever the Case May Be" campaign at 61 out of 100, reflecting solid strategic coherence and an authentic comedic voice, with room to deepen impact through stronger product integration and more differentiated calls to action across the Ontario market.
"Whatever the Case May Be" is The Beer Store's ongoing brand platform created by Toronto agency King Ursa. The 2023 campaign features comedic video ads set in Ontario communities including Bobcaygeon, Sault Ste. Marie, and Hamilton, promoting the retailer's value and convenience across more than 420 locations in Canada.
King Ursa, a Toronto-based agency, created the 2023 campaign. King Ursa was appointed The Beer Store's agency of record in November 2021, as reported by Campaign Canada, and has led the "Whatever the Case May Be" platform since its debut in 2022.
The 2023 campaign features characters from Beaverton, Bobcaygeon, Hamilton, and Sault Ste. Marie. Each community receives its own comedic video portrait, connecting The Beer Store's province-wide network of locations to specific local identities across Ontario, Canada.
The 2022 campaign highlighted the variety of people who shop at The Beer Store. The 2023 execution shifts focus to Ontario communities themselves, emphasising local belonging, geographic reach, and value. Both campaigns use humour as their primary creative register under the same King Ursa-built platform.
The Beer Store held 41.3% of Ontario beverage-alcohol volume in fiscal 2023, according to the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario, compared with 51.0% for the LCBO. The Beer Store's share rises significantly when direct delivery to licensed establishments is included in the calculation.
Clapboard rates the 2023 "Whatever the Case May Be" campaign 61 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong strategic coherence and authentic comedic voice rooted in Ontario community identity, while noting potential to sharpen product integration and calls to action across the Canadian market.
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