Stella Artois is a beer with over 600 years of Belgian brewing expertise. And when you're built on a legacy as rich as this, you take pride not only in brewing your beer, but in how you serve it. Enter the 9 Step Pour – Stella Artois' ritual that ensures each Chalice is poured to perfection.
However, when you have traditions and heritage so rooted in the past, the challenge is to find a way to make them relevant in the 21st century and stand out as distinct from the sea of content published daily. Our task at hand was to stay true to the brand and get people talking about what sets Stella Artois apart from the competition.
To ensure the effectiveness of the content created around the 9 Step Pour, we measured the number of impressions, video views generated, and overall social engagement rate compared to campaign benchmarks. The goal, quantified through these metrics, was to show that this content resonated with Stella Artois' audience.
VaynerMedia took Stella Artois' tenets of artistry and beauty to heart and focused on creating a mouthwatering, thumb-stopping piece of video content that was centered solely on the beer and the nine individual steps of the ritual pour. It was important to choose a location that would bring Stella Artois and the ritual into the modern day, but also represent a bar that reflected the premium nature of the brand. To fit this, we selected a trendy, upscale location in Brooklyn, NY. Next, we had to find the right person to execute the perfect pour. To ensure it was performed flawlessly, we partnered with our Belgian Master Beer Sommelier to select a bartender that he himself had personally trained in the art of the ritual. Finally, to capture and record the pour itself, we turned to a specific type of camera that allowed us to capture, in slow motion, details of scenes unparalleled by other types of video recording. We were able to show every minute detail of the pour in a way Stella Artois never had before, allowing this content to truly stand out in social media feeds, primarily on Facebook. To distribute this content, we analyzed successful past video content from Stella Artois and discovered that shorter length content resonated more strongly with our audience. Based on these insights , we released the 9-step pour in a shorter, more digestible , episodic form to ensure our audience saw all the steps required to pour a perfect Chalice of Stella Artois. |
Based on multiple performance metrics, this content was by far the strongest published during the key summer selling months. The spots generated more than 10 million impressions and over 1.1 million video views. The engagement rate for this content was 75% higher than campaign benchmarks, showing the content successfully broke through the clutter and grabbed viewers' attention.
Seeing the success of the digital release of our content, Stella Artois extended the content beyond the digital sphere and placed it on a dedicated digital billboard in Times Square, generating an additional 140MM+ impressions on the 9 Step Pour video.
Most importantly, the strong and positive responses showed that even a beer with 600 years of brewing expertise could make its traditions and heritage relevant with its fans of today.
