Title	THE SOCIAL BEER
Brand	SPENDRUPS BRYGGERI AB
Product/Service	NORRLANDS GULD
Category	C03. Messaging Campaign
Entrant	ÅKESTAM HOLST Stockholm, SWEDEN
Idea Creation	ÅKESTAM HOLST Stockholm, SWEDEN
Production	ÅKESTAM HOLST Stockholm, SWEDEN
Production 2	GO! FIGHT! FANTASTIC! Stockholm, SWEDEN
Production 3	BKRY Stockholm, SWEDEN
Additional Company	BSMART CREATIVE PARTNER Stockholm, SWEDEN

Name	Company	Position
Magnus Jakobsson	Åkestam Holst NoA	Executive Creative Director
Martin Noreby	Åkestam Holst NoA	Art Director
Simon Lublin	Åkestam Holst NoA	Copywriter
Joakim Khoury	Åkestam Holst NoA	Art Director
Daniel Vaccino	Åkestam Holst NoA	Copywriter
Bella Lagerquist	Åkestam Holst NoA	Account Manager
Kenna Magnusson	Åkestam Holst NoA	Motion Designer
Ida Persson	Åkestam Holst NoA	PR Strategist
Eskil Lundberg	BKRY	Motion Designer
Johan Albrektsson	Go! Fight! Fantastic!	Technical Director

Background

Norrlands Guld is one of Sweden’s leading beers. The brand is built and brewed on a promise of togetherness, and these days, being together equals putting down your phone for a while. For the upcoming summer of FIFA 2018 we had a specific challenge on our hands, since Norrlands Guld had lost their official sponsorship of The Swedish National Team to a competing Beer Brand. This changed the circumstances and blocked us from traditional sponsor-channels. We needed an alterative solution in order to reach fans and become part of the buzz. With a technology designed specifically for the FIFA 2018 world cup, the campaign was implemented at sports bars around Sweden: the center of the action and given go-to-place for our selected audience: people who love football. And beer.

Describe the creative idea

According to a recent Swedish study 70 % feel that their phones just get in the way, when they get together. So for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, we brewed up a solution. Introducing the Social Beer – an updated Norrlands Guld that doubled as drinkable social media. A tailored algorithm collected the latest and biggest World Cup related tweets, and printed them onto the beers foam using a malt-based ink. Tweets were served within seconds from first appearing on the Twitter platform. Ready to drink, ready to share, and allowing fans to put down their phones without missing out on the action. With the simple idea of Twitter on tap we turned social media into something social again, while emphasizing the brands longtime promise of togetherness.

Describe the strategy

The World Cup brings people from all around the world together. But it’s also the single most tweeted event in the world, meaning people tend to spend a lot of time checking social media while watching. Since Norrlands Guld is all about togetherness, we wanted to create an idea that helped people stay off their phones without missing out on the action. During the World Cup millions of Swedes get together at restaurants and spors bars, so it was crucial business-wise to offer up something extra, and extra relevant, to grab fans attention. Given the fact that Norrlands Guld had recently lost their sponsorship of the Swedish National Team, we could not rely on posters, coasters or two-for-1-game-night-deals. We needed to invent something different, something that in itself could make our beer a trending topic, and that underlined Norrlands Gulds mission to let people spend quality time together.

Describe the execution

We built a machine that scanned Twitter for the most relevant World Cup tweets, and then printed them onto beer-foam, using a malt-based ink. Thanks to a tailored algorithm beers were served within seconds, after first being posted on the Twitter platform. The technology was developed specifically for the World Cup in order to let fans enjoy the fun phone-free, and was implemented at large sports bars around Sweden during the summer. Events were documented and turned into sharable film content, which was spread mostly organically and – perhaps a bit ironically - thanks to a massive positive response on social media. The campaign was supported by in-store-materials, banners, prints that invited people to enjoy a Social Beer, and a nation-wide study of Sweden´s thoughts on smart-phone-habits: which was used as a backdrop for launching The Social Beer.

List the results

The Social Beer became the summer’s trending beer topic with record-braking numbers in sales, likes and media-mentions. It underlined the brands promise of togetherness and gave Norrlands Guld a real-time-reason-to-speak during the commercially crowded world cup. Sales increased 31 % in the crucially important Bar- and restaurants-channels, beating all expectations and making Norrlands Guld the best-selling beer in Sweden, by far. Brand-mentions in social media increased 400 % during the campaign. With cold beer as our main channel, we achieved a reach of 375 million impressions thanks to posts and news-pieces in Vice, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, CBS News, In The Know, Ruptly, International Business Times, Food & Wine and many others. Sweden got knocked out in the quarterfinals, but for Norrlands Guld the World Cup resulted in gold.