‘Join The Ride’, Carlsberg’s new global campaign activating its Official Beer Partner of the Premier League status, is spearheaded by a TV and cinema commercial built around the idea that the league season is a rollercoaster of emotions.
Featuring the wider football diaspora – from fans and commentators, refs and linesman, to stewards and players – the spot aims to place Carlsberg at the very core of Premier League’s passions and exceptional moments.
Featuring the beer brand’s football ambassadors – Robbie Fowler, Gareth Southgate, Jimmy Bullard, Marcel Desailly and Chris Kamara – it depicts the wider football family taking a rollercoaster ride to symbolise the ups and downs, the tension and excitement of the new season.
And there isn’t a football pitch or a ball in sight.
Working within the Danish beer brand’s umbrella ‘That call for a Carlsberg’ strategy, the campaign seeks to leverage its Barclays Premier League rights to its cumulative 4.7bn strong audience, the campaign uses the strapline ‘That Premier Feeling…That Calls for a Carlsberg’ as the spot’s sign off
The commercial, which featured 200-plus extras aboard a rollercoaster travelling at 120kmh more than 100 times around its track for the shoot, was filmed on 20 cameras and by a crew of 120 at Amsterdam’s Walibi Park ‘Goliath’ rollercoaster.
It is also accompanied by a seeded ‘Making Of’ behind-the-scene style online film.
The TV work, created by Buenos Aires-based agency Santo and directed by Juan Cabral, introduces a multi-platform global initiative that spans packaging, point of sale, print, outdoor advertising, digital and PR, across the world.
The creative on these others channels and platforms will not necessarily feature the rollercoaster, but will continue the ‘emotional ride’ idea.
For example, print executions don’t show a rollercoaster, but feature a fan making different expressions.
Carlsberg is also engaging fans digitally by encouraging them to participate on its Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages by using the #JoinTheRide, #Carlsberg and #BPL hashtags.
This phase is being boosted by the personal Twitter feeds of its brand ambassadors including @Robbie9Fowler and @GarethSouthgate
The work will also include a second-screen app that will pair with Twitter to curate tweets for fans of specific clubs.
‘We believe in emotional storytelling, we aimed to capture the emotions coming out of the Premier League and tie it together with the brand in an original and impactful way, explains Carlsberg VP of digital/media/content Jens Jermiin.
‘We looked at football and the Premier League as an oasis from society’s norms. We know that football has a liberating power; men tend not to cry in public places, but most men have cried in stadiums watching the games, Jermiin adds. ‘It’s a microcosmos, with its own norms and rules, a place where men show emotions.’
The Barclays Premier League which is watched in 212 countries across the world and this global campaign launched first in the brewer’s home country Denmark and also in Ireland, before rolling out across a further 2019 countries through late 2013 and early 2014.
The Barclays Premier League is the most emotionally charged football league on the planet. We have used these emotions to create a commercial that is visually striking and celebrates why we think the Premier League is football that goes above expectations and that ‘Calls for a Carlsberg’,’ outlines Carlsberg’s VP Brand Tom Moradpour.
‘Carlsberg’s football story is a fan story, not a player story and the [the brand is] about the fans that watch games with a beer in their hands, so we took the action off the pitch and out of the stadium and approach it from the perspective of a fan,’ he adds.
Comment
This follows hot on the heels of the beer brand’s ongoing #TimeToTakeYourSeats ticket competition (see previous case study).
Carlsberg’s three-year Premier League partnership is the latest asset in the international football portfolio its has steadily built up since the 1970s.
Its soccer rights span its status as the official beer of both the England and Ireland national teams, it also sponsors leading clubs such as Liverpool FC and Arsenal FC, plus it is the longest serving partner of UEFA’s European Football Championships (the 2016 competition will be its eighth consecutive tournament).
Moradpour argues that the strategy behind adding the Premier League to this portfolio is that it adds both scale and frequency to the brand’s football assets
‘The Premier League is frequent, played nine months of the year every year, and huge, with fans across the world. For example, Asia is one of our biggest strategic priorities and certain [Premiership] clubs have their biggest fan clubs in China or Thailand.’
Links
TV Ad On YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P47eLknD0qo
Hashtag:
#JOINTHERIDE
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