Steinlager is New Zealand's national beer. But they were seeing a worrying trend emerge as Kiwis in their 20s moved away from traditional NZ brands. For these young Kiwis, the classic, iconic Steinlager was a little bit old fashioned and uncool.

With a quarter of the population living overseas and immigrants now making up another quarter of our demographic, NZ culture has changed. More and more, young Kiwis were looking overseas for inspiration and rejecting anything that represents 'old New Zealand' as they strive to appear more worldly.

It was from this insight that Steinlager Tokyo Dry was born. A beer made from NZ ingredients and Japanese brewing mastery.

Steinlager wanted to advertise this Japanese inspired beer without losing their NZ heritage, So we followed the format of Tokyo Dry by taking another iconic New Zealand classic and remaking it with Japanese masters of a different kind.

Music is intrinsically linked to a country's national identity and nothing goes with beer more than a great song. So, what could be a better way to advertise a beer that combines two different cultures, than with music that does the same?

We took an iconic New Zealand song, 'Slice of Heaven' by Dave Dobbyn and Herbs, and remade it in Japan. Pegged as NZs unofficial National Anthem, it's a song that every Kiwi knows and loves. Now, more than 20 years after it first appeared in the charts it was perfectly poised for an update.

This film was the outcome, a music video, released on social and featuring a whole range of Japanese musicians from J-pop singers to Taiko drummers, each of whom put their own spin on the song. Making a fresher take on an old Kiwi classic, just like Steinlager did when they made Tokyo Dry.

We needed to reach saavy young New Zealanders who rejected anything that looked like advertising so instead of treating the release of the song as a traditional advertising campaign, we treated it like any other song release with a music video, street posters, merchandise, PR and a social campaign – all intended to generate substantial hype and talkability around Tokyo Dry.

Because the song is such a precious part of New Zealand culture we knew doing anything with it was risky. So on launch day we asked Dave Dobbyn (the original singer and New Zealand's most famous musician) to release a video on his social pages showing him watching the music video for the first time, his genuine, enthusiastic reaction went a long way to making sure there were no negative comments. Dave Dobbyn also took part in several radio interviews to talk about the campaign (and the beer).

The night before the launch, the countries most watched news show - Seven Sharp, played an exclusive first look at the music video. Then the next morning our biggest Newspaper, The NZ Herald ran a story about the song and shared the music video online as well on their social pages.

Throughout the day radio DJs played and talked about the song and on social, Dave Dobbyn shared a video of himself watching the music video, he was pretty excited about the whole thing!

Over the next few days, all the Japanese musicians and the countries most popular radio stations also shared the music video on social.

The song was released on Spotify and iTunes and was accompanied by street posters, merchandise giveaways on social and cutdowns that appeared on TV and cinema.

Business Results

Sales went up 44% in volume and 28% in value.

Not only is the brand increasing penetration, it continues to bring new drinkers into the category.

Communications Results

Our version of ‘slice of heaven’ has earnt its own place in New Zealand culture.

The whole campaign gained a reach of 4,915,813 (and New Zealand has a population of only 4.8 million).

Online video results

472,229 Film Video completions (+77% exceeded delivery against benchmarks)

1,720,538 unique kiwis 18+

557,479 engagements with social content with 602 shares