Art in a Bottle

Amstel is the leading premium import light beer in the US. The company spends over $30M per year to connect with consumers, yet the brand team felt that it lacked a coherent, compelling brand positioning. How would Amstel enhance the HUSA portfolio including Heineken and Heineken Light along with the FEMSA brands?

Our team was challenged with the task of delivering a powerful new positioning. We managed the research process, we created a complete brand architecture and developed the new brand promise “Live Tastefully.” All designed to move slightly more affluent than the domestic light beers to carve out a unique niche for Amstel Light.

What we did not count on was that the existing global advertising agency partner would stumble in the execution. Their articulation of the strategy was to attempt to tell the audience what “Tasteful Living” looked like. But your idea of tasteful, and my idea of tasteful, might be completely different things. The brand team asked us back to build the creative campaign aligned with the work, and then manage the validation process. Which we did successfully, over more than a few Amstel Lights. We called this creative “Art in a Bottle.” A solution that allowed the audience to ascribe their own ideas of tasteful to the abstract imagery.