Brahma is a premium bottled Brazilian lager. The UK’s challenge was to successfully launch the brand and engage an often elusive audience. Our audience seeks authenticity, rejecting the fake and mass marketed. To gain their trust we had to behave like a native Brasilian in all our communication. Avoiding the clichéd world of football, carnivals and beaches, we chose to build on the growing appreciation of real Brasilian culture focusing our efforts on music and art to encourage intrigue and exploration of the brand’s heritage.

The UK results combined to make the launch of Brahma InBev’s most successful NPD launch since 1994. We more than doubled our volume target and achieved a year 1 awareness score of 39%, an impressive 12% above expectation. As such, InBev regard this work as a global best practice.

Our behaviour within media had to feel like it had come straight from Brazil; gritty, urban and unpolished. Employing the services of Brasilian street artist Speto we hijacked outdoor formats to take his art to a local level. Breaking the mold we brought together Brasilian and UK musicians to create a bank of unique content. Entitled TrocaBrahma this became the ideal platform to promote Brahma at our own music events and on TV .

Regularly on the move, urbanites were targeted with bespoke artwork on phone boxes, bus-rears and the underground. With our focus on generating word of mouth, we designed outdoor to look like fly-posting and had Speto create his artwork live at a high traffic site to create hype around the music event. This was supported by edgy style press and listing websites. The gigs sold out and were later aired on C4.