844 million people around the world are living without access to clean water. As with any issue this big, it can be difficult for people to know how to get involved. Since 2015, Stella Artois has been working to change that. In partnership with Water.org, we’ve made it easy to make a difference: simply purchasing Stella helps Water.org provide water access to those who need it most. So far we’ve helped over 1.7 million people gain access to clean water, with a goal of reaching 3.5 million people by 2020. In 2019 to help get us even closer to this goal we leveraged the biggest stage in America – the Super Bowl – to inspire people to choose Stella for a good cause. As one of the biggest beer-drinking moments of the year, the landscape was ripe for us to strike with our “choose Stella and feel good” message.

Our mission: inspire people to change up their usual drink for a good cause. So we identified two of the most recognizable characters in pop culture, beloved by the Stella Artois audience and known for their iconic drinks – Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw and her Cosmo and Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski and his White Russians.

We brought the characters back for the first time in years to show that the simple act of ordering a drink can do good and make an impact… begging the question of people everywhere: if The Dude and Carrie can change up their signature drinks, why can’t you?

To underscore the ease of this switch, we incorporated a final surprise during the live Super Bowl broadcast, airing an edit that also featured Johnathan Goldsmith (better known as Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man) changing up his usual brew for a Stella.

Getting involved in an issue as big as the global water crisis can be overwhelming, but Stella and Water.org have made it as easy as the pour of a beer to help. So how do you get people to take notice and choose your beer? By taking your message to the biggest stage there is, the Super Bowl. But even more critical than the audience reached by the game itself, is the consumer behavior that surrounds it: Super Bowl is one of the biggest beer-drinking moments of the year, with 50MM cases sold in the two weeks before the game.

Armed with this behavioral insight, we enlisted The Dude and Carrie Bradshaw, beloved characters known for regularly enjoying two of pop culture’s most iconic signature drinks, to show Americans that following in their footsteps and switching up their “usual” for Stella could help make a big difference this Super Bowl.

Three weeks before the Super Bowl, we teased the return of Carrie and the Dude with unbranded teasers posted on the talents’ personal social accounts, driving the internet wild with speculation.

A few days later, with the internet frenzy peaking, we dropped an online Stella Artois branded teaser featuring Carrie Bradshaw recreating her iconic bus scene from the opening credits of Sex and the City - only this time, the bus ad urged her to change up the usual to give water access. The teaser ran on TV, and Stella and Sarah Jessica Parker’s social pages.

Finally, we launched our full Super Bowl ad featuring Carrie and The Dude changing up their usual for a Stella Artois, surprising everyone in the bar, and in turn, inspiring leagues of their fans to make the change themselves. It was released on the YouTube Masthead before being aired during the broadcast.

America went wild for the return of Carrie and the Dude.

Overall, we saw 7.6 billion impressions, 418,000 social mentions, and 13.9 million ad views of the ad on YouTube.

During the game, Stella Artois was the #3 most talked about brand on social. In the Super Bowl period, Stella Artois also was #1 in social engagements and #2 social follower gains out of all Anheuser-Busch brands.

All this attention has helped Stella Artois and Water.org make a huge difference on the global water crisis.

Purchase frequency of Stella Artois increased 15.1% during the 4 weeks post-Super Bowl.

Site traffic to the campaign URL, StellaArtois.com/DoGood, increased 77%, and of those visits 60% clicked through to Water.org’s website to learn more about donating to the cause.

Most importantly, thanks to the wave of people changing up the usual, we helped provide water access to over 300,000 people during the campaign period.