Stella Artois has been the UK’s no.1 premium beer brand for years. Times are changing however. Competition within the beer category has exploded - and with increasing competition it’s become harder to keep share of mind amongst savvy, mature and affluent drinkers. You can’t just buy their attention any more. You need to earn it.

In the face of this threat, Stella Artois undertook deep ethnographic research and quantitative profiling to understand its audience. This revealed them to be “Experience Maximisers” – ambitious men and women on a mission to wring the most out of life, professionally and personally. It also highlighted a tension that Stella Artois could resolve for them: their constant drive to DO often stood in the way of the enjoyment and experience they craved. So, we decided to create an activation that would become an intervention, inspiring them busy less and enjoy more.

Stella Artois believes in being present because, on the continent we come from, enjoying simple pleasures is the root of all joy. We don’t let modern distractions interfere with enjoyment. We believe that a great beer, served in a Chalice, with good food and good friends, is a humble step towards a life well lived. Something we call “Joie de Bie`re.”

With 75% of Brits saying they struggle to fit everything into their day, we needed to undermine the ‘busy’ status symbol to get them to reprioritize simple pleasures. So, taking this need to multitask to the extreme, we reimagined a vessel designed for savoring, our Chalice, and turned it into an ‘on the go’ paper cup. We secretly filmed a social experiment where we distributed these paper Chalices to unexpecting commuters. The disastrous results proving that some things in life, like Stella Artois, are simply meant to be savored.

Our strategy was to

GET mature, affluent drinkers

TO enjoy Stella Artois the way we do in Le Village (our European home)

BY highlighting and resolving the modern distractions that get in their way

Creating a brand experience was central to this strategy as it allowed us to make an impact at a time and place our audience was forgetting to enjoy life’s simple pleasures: in the middle of their busy days, in the middle of London - one of the world’s busiest cities.

The strategy was also to package the experience as a social experiment, that shone a light on the issue without needing to solve it directly. By recording and distributing the results, we knew we would greatly multiply reach and impact – and the activation wouldn’t rely on how many experienced it in real life if it was entertaining enough to get shared, written and talked about.

We held Stella Artois’ “On the Go” experience/experiment in central London in August 2018, after months of painstaking planning. It featured a bespoke Piaggio Ape coffee cart rebranded in Stella Artois livery, manned by two charming “beeristas” (our homage to coffeeshop baristas) who handed out fresh Chalices of Stella Artois to members of the public, for free. The only catch being that these were flimsy, coffee cup style paper Chalices, instead of real glass ones...

The resulting chaos was filmed and cut into 60 second content that was distributed in a way that enhanced our message of removing distraction and savoring life. Firstly, by disrupting our audience when they were 'mindlessly scrolling' on Facebook, and secondly by leaning into channels where they were immersed in long form content and ready to listen, through cinema and premium online video placement on sites such as GQ, Marie Claire & The Economist.

Deliberately disastrous experiential = exceptionally engaging content

- Long form digital content site View Through Rate to completion was 49% vs a 36% benchmark

- Facebook View Through Rate to completion was 10% - 10X the 1% benchmark **

- Facebook Engagements (comments/reactions/shares) achieved 0.22% - double the 0.1% benchmark **

Big brand impact, as part of a broader campaign

‘On the Go’ was a critical part of a broader equity campaign, including TV, Digital and contextual OOH.

Earned media campaign reach was 8 million, with 25 Pieces of coverage in consumer & trade media. Paid media reached 47% of our audience across cinema, long form digital content sites and Facebook.

A pre-test of these assets showed the campaign had ability to drive Retained Branded Recognition (Top 40%), Equity (Top 40%) and Persuasion (Top 20%) amongst our target audience.

*Benchmark from MOAT analytics

**Benchmark from Adobe