Inside the Campaign: MediaCom’s ‘Buy a Lady a Drink’ for Stella Artois

 

The 4A’s is committed to showcasing creative work done by member agencies through its Inside the Campaign feature. Here MediaCom discusses how its agency helped create the “Buy a Lady a Drink” (BALAD) campaign for Stella Artois.

Campaign: Buy a Lady a Drink (BALAD)

Agency:  MediaCom

Client: Anheuser-Busch InBev, Stella Artois

Project Background

Stella Artois is a special beer brand with a rich heritage dating back hundreds of years. Its quality, taste and standards are known the world over.

Specifically in the United States, awareness is the main challenge. The brand’s top competitors are heavy spenders and are strongly recognized and considered by similar consumers. Stella Artois needs to be strategic about delivering the brand message in the right environment to make the biggest impact. In addition, increased awareness of Stella Artois wasn’t the only focus this past spring: The brand also wished to promote its partnership with Water.org to bring clean water to people in developing countries.

Stella Artois leveraged a key idea to deliver a breakthrough campaign that would capture the imagination, drawing attention to both the brand and its cause.

 

Description of Creative Ideas and Insights

When promoting Stella Artois, the brand’s legendary chalice always plays a central role.

In fact, Stella Artois created limited-edition chalices exclusively for its “Buy a Lady a Drink” alliance with Water.org. The purchase of a chalice buys five years of clean drinking water for a person in an identified developing region. So there it was – the chalice and the charity. Now what?

The Academy Awards telecast was a perfect fit for Stella Artois, not only because its viewers so closely mirror Stella Artois’ target demo, but also because the awards season stands for our CCI of Be Legacy. And what’s the biggest thing to hit the Red Carpet at the Oscars? The clothes, of course. The red carpet has become almost as important as the ceremony itself, so we put the brand right there to hijack the conversation in the most organic way possible, with a custom dress inspired by the special BALAD chalices.

 

Advertising Strategy

“Who are you wearing?” is the first thing every actor hears at televised red carpet events, and, while some are attempting to put an end to this superficial practice, we knew reporters at the Oscars would still ooh-and-ahh the clothes, and ask the inevitable question. In fact, we were counting on it.

Because E! Entertainment Television airs the pre-ceremony red carpet show, we asked E! host Maria Menounos to wear the dress and participate in our sneak approach. Once Maria was asked who made her dress, she’d have the perfect opening to talk about Stella Artois and Water.org.

 

Executing “Buy a Lady a Drink” 

We teased the collaboration between Maria and celebrity dress designer, Christian Siriano, ahead of the broadcast.

Entertaining vignettes on E! gave viewers a behind-the-scenes look at Christian and Maria designing the dress. We watched them brainstorm, sketch and dream. Teaser stories on eonline.com supported
“Buy a Lady a Drink”, and were flanked by Stella Artois advertisements that promoted the special chalices. Viewers could watch the vignettes, read about the dress, and click through to a dedicated webpage to purchase a chalice, which in turn raised money for Water.org.

Our plan worked like a charm, with Maria seizing multiple opportunities to discuss the dress, Stella Artois and Water.org during the “E! Countdown to the Red Carpet” and “Live from the Red Carpet” broadcasts.

Stella Artois was also the exclusive beer served at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Maria walked the floor, gave interviews and had her photo taken in front of the party’s wall of greenery and in the infamous Vanity Fair photo booth. In the meantime, Stella Artois chalices were in the hands of every Hollywood actor and actress in attendance.

When the Vanity Fair Hollywood Edition was published, Stella Artois was again a key sponsor, and photos of Maria in the unique Oscar gown were front and center.

 

The Results

The dress-as-living-media campaign was an Oscar-worthy success. The activation generated a 7% increase in awareness and a 1,150 percent increase in search volume on Oscar Sunday.

Most importantly, Stella Artois saw a 25 percent increase in overall BALAD chalice sales in only 48 hours: Ten thousand units were sold on Oscar Sunday and the next day, producing five years of clean drinking water for 10,000 women in the developing world.

Lastly, in addition to proceeds from the chalice sales, we auctioned the gown on charitybuzz.com, with all proceeds from the sale going to Water.org.