For over 50 years, Victoria Bitter has been a beloved beer for the Australian public. Its 95%+ awareness can be attributed to its iconic green emblem, anthem, and its associations around 'hard work'. Since it has fallen victim to declining sales from the aggressive craft and contemporary beer categories taking from their core consumer.

VB has generations of nostalgia teaming from the brand. From the eons of work mentioned above, VB found itself creeping into 18-24yo street-sub cultures as a brand to wear, drink and be associated with. Until now, VB had let this organically grow.

The task was to engage our fickle 18-24yo audience in pubs around Australia for Australia Day to drive further passion for the VB brand, without selling out.

A range of limited edition VB merchandise featuring custom designs illustrated alongside a street sub-culture icon. These illustrations came to life through an augmented reality animation that tied into the nostalgic brand anthem and the new-age iconography which represented our sub-cultures interpretation of 'hard work'.

The merchandise was targeted to the sub-culture hotspot pubs and could be received as a gift with purchase when buying VB over the bar.

The selection of the artist and icons and characters illustrated depicted our audience's perspective on where hard work is focused within their lives. This includes grassroots musicians on the road (speakers, microphones), surfing culture (shark, surfer and waves) alongside their heavy blue-collar, trade based lifestyle that they over-index in (Boots, Ute, Tradie, Dog).

Navigating our way through a fickle sub-culture that is sensitive to 'corporatising' was a key consideration when gathering insights on how to engage them.

We worked initially with colt 'rip-off' website owners Victor Bravos (https://victorbravos.com/) and illustrator Jake Ross who are both iconic to this audience to qualitatively understand the critical nuance with the audience. From these interviews, we both established critical demographic facts and the methodology which was required to ensure this was brilliantly received.

What was apparent, was our audience was focused beach-side, over-indexed & celebrated working hard within trades and music greatly over-indexed in their engagement and conversations. This was then validated by Q (https://www.sparksandhoney.com/qplatform). Also, we only were relevant in their lives as beer and what wearing our logo represented to them - an anti-craft statement.

The strategic focus was to co-create merchandise within their community which enabled that representation, any more would be overstepping.

We first selected Jake Ross to illustrate the merchandise. His following over-indexed in beachside postcodes and his work a symbol of belonging to the audience.

Next, we broke down the key moments we wanted to represent. Also the merchandise items which were best-sellers on Victor Bravos website, giving us the clues to what's appealing.

Freedom was then given to Jake Ross to design a treatment and series of interpretations of 'hard work' in the eyes of his audience which became the livery over the merchandise.

Mighty Nice then animated our hero piece to the VB anthem which when scanned by a phone which had visited the website via our QR code brought the whole experience to life.

We worked with key pub groups who until now have struggled to engage this audience, to deliver this as a hero promotion on Australia Day - a key moment for this audience.

13,500 Pieces of merchandise produced

100% Sold out in under 12 hours

97% Watch-through rates

1000+ Unique scans on Australia Day

100% Retailer uptake