Stella Artois was originally brewed as a Christmas beer, and Christmas remains a key sales period for the brand. It also aligns perfectly to its brand philosophy of encouraging people to savour time with the people they love. However people who don’t savour this time are bar staff.

In 2021 staff shortages in the UK were leading to rising levels of abuse in bars. And this was due to reach a peak over the festive period. So, we wanted to do something about it.

Stella Artois launched a revolutionary new beer: ‘Stella Please’, it was the same as Stella Artois but it was £1 cheaper, rewarding those who ordered using the magic word.

We partnered with celebrity chef Marco Pierre-White, famous for his temper and not so measured words to let everyone know and reminded Britain to keep it courteous in national press ads.

Then, we matched every discounted pint with a £1 donation to HospitalityAction, a charity that provides support to bar staff.

We identified a real issue for one of the most important audiences to Stella Artois - those that serve our beer.

With staff shortages causing delays and mistakes to service, the verbal abuse towards hospitality workers was on the rise. At Christmas, when demand is at its highest, the abuse gets even worse.

Our research showed that 71% of bar staff had experienced rudeness from their customers. Not using ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ was the most common example of impolite behaviour that often led to worse behaviour later.

So we decided to act by targeting directly where the problem was happening - directly at the point of purchase in bars across the UK.

We executed the campaign across a range of real world and digital formats including full-page national press, paid and organic video content on YouTube, Instagram and Twitter as well as point of sale and merch at selected bars and pubs across the UK. The campaign ran for the entirety of December 2021.

By rewarding those who ordered Stella Please, we were able to create over 84m earned impressions in national media and increase sales by 26%. But more importantly, we were able to use this moment to reset bar-behaviour and remind a nation that manners don’t cost a thing, in fact, they can save you money.