For our Super Bowl campaign, we partnered with Sarah Jessica Parker and Jeff Bridges to reprise their most iconic, cocktail loving characters, Carrie Bradshaw and Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski.

844 million people around the world live without access to clean water. For some, the walk to clean water takes up to 6 hours a day, impacting their ability to work, go to school, or enjoy any free time at all. Since 2015, Stella Artois has been working to change that. In partnership with Water.org, we’ve made it so that purchasing Stella Artois helps provide water access to those who need it most. So far, we’ve helped over 1.7 million people gain access to clean water. This year, we wanted to help that number climb even higher. Using the Super Bowl as our platform, our brief was to create a movement of Americans switching to Stella Artois, allowing us to provide clean water access to even more people all over the world.

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.

The numbers of those affected by the global water crisis are staggering, so it can be hard for our audience to see how they alone could make a difference.

We wanted to build a global social movement by showing people that a little change can do a lot of good. Thanks to our partnership with Water.org, by simply changing their usual drink for a Stella any person can help provide at least a month of clean water to someone in the developing world.

Any good social movement is born from an impactful launch, and then spread through social. So, we identified two icons who were known all over the world for their signature drinks and got them to kick off our movement by changing up their usual. We then spread the movement across America using #PourItForward, reminding everyone that they can make a difference simply by choosing a different beer.

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.

The world 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 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.