I guess “I am Canadian!” probably wouldn’t work here…

The marketing plan began with an interesting challenge: How to market Canadian to Americans.

When Molson Coors gathered U.S. beer drinkers into focus groups and asked them what they thought about Canada, the response was a resounding “not much.”

“We don’t have a clear identity internationally . . .,” the Canadian-born Mr. Lavoie said. “They don’t think of Canada, first of all. And when they do think of Canada, they go right for the clichés.”

But those clichés — about wilderness and nice people — are fertile ground for a beer brand.

Mr. Dolan said Americans think the ingredients used to make beer in Canada — from water to barley — must be more clean and pure because of the perception that Canada is home to wilderness.

“They feel that unlike some of the crowded cities in the U.S. where beers are brewed, that there’s just got to be a better beer that comes from Canada because of that pristine landscape. . . Even Canadian tap water is borne from a place that’s pretty pure up there,” he said.

In TV ads that will run in northeastern border states, a bottle of Canadian falls to the ground and shatters. Computer generated imagery shows pristine Canadian wilderness growing out of the spilled beer.