In South Africa, Castle Lager is the beer that is renowned for bringing friends together. Be it watching the game, a night out, or just relaxing around the open fire. When friends get together, there’s always a Castle Lager in hand.

The brand has set out to play a bigger role in moments of true friendship through product innovation. In a selfie-obsessed world, where photos are taken, posted online, and then forgotten within minutes, we wanted to give friends a unique and tangible new way to capture their memories.

The solution was to use a bespoke camera lens combined with pin-hole camera technology to create the Castle Lager Selfie Bottle. The worlds very first beer bottle camera, that not only allows consumers to share a great beer with their friends, but take a real photo of the moment that they can keep forever.

Using a custom designed camera lens that caters for the curvature of the bottle, and paper technology acting as a shutter - the Selfie Bottle will enable consumers to share the great taste of Castle Lager with their friends, and use the bottle to take a real photo of the moment.

Bottle Components:

- Castle Lager Bottle,

- Acrylic spacer,

- Photo paper,

- Light-proof foil,

- Labelling & Bottle wrap,

- Bespoke 4mm Lens

How the Selfie Bottle works:

1) Finish the beer, replace the beer cap

2) Remove the foil light protector at the rear of the bottle,

3) Strike a pose and open the front lens cover of the packaging for 5 - 10 seconds and close it again.

4) Roll the bottle to disperse the ink into the light-exposed photo paper,

5) Remove the rear label to reveal the photo.

The bottle is in the final stages of refinement.

The lenses themselves are being tooled for mass manufacturing.

Additionally, we are finalising design tweaks on a cork screw mechanism that will be placed in the neck of the bottle and will allow liquid to flow freely but will eliminate light coming into the bottle before exposure.

The last 20 years has seen an influx of large, international beer brands entering the South African market place. Many of these beers play in the same male-bonding occasion space as Castle Lager. In order to remain top of mind, and maintain its position as South Africa’s number 1 friendship beer, the brand needs to continually find innovative new ways to be a key part of moments of true friendship.

The Castle Lager Selfie Bottle might still only be in the prototype phase, but the test results so far have been extremely promising. With further investment into the cheapest possible camera lens, paper and screw top technology, mass production is in sight within the next 3 to 6 months. This would not only be the world’s very first working beer bottle camera, but a game changer in the industry.