Dive Brief:

• Beer brand Stella Artois is unveiling a new summer campaign, "Summer Like You're On Vacation," spearheaded by a new TV ad featuring English actor Idris Elba, according to materials shared with Marketing Dive.
• The ad, directed by VaynerMedia, will be broadcast nationally in 15-second and 30-second spots throughout the summer, and shown on web sites and social platforms. Additionally, the brand will post videos on social media that challenge conventional ideas of vacation. Elba served as creative director on the spot.
• In addition, Stella's out-of-home (OOH) ads will encourage consumers to think of a hometown as an exotic location, where New York City becomes "Isla Del Manhattan" and Miami is "Cote de 365." The brand intends to continue with the theme of relatability with more planned for this summer, per the release.

Dive Insight:

Stella Artois says its main goal is refreshing its image in ways that makes it more "relatable." The brand's summer campaign has been tackling the idea of "usual," by positioning Stella Artois as a way to turn the ordinary into something special. The brand is also taking a localized approach, focusing on NYC residents with custom OOH creative, per The Drum, and the TV spot, which is set on a city building.

Stella Artois kicked off the summer creative in June with "Red Stella Cups," a design play on the "OG red party cup," as a way to relate to consumers throwing casual social gatherings and help them upgrade their events, per a press release. The brand released 1,000 limited edition six-packs of the red Stella Artois chalices and gave customers the option to purchase a pack for $10 on the Stella Artois website. Users were encouraged to post photos of themselves with the cups on social media with the hashtag #RedStellaCup.

Efforts to relate to the "typical American beer drinker" were also visible in January with a humorous Super Bowl ad. As part of its "Change Up The Usual" campaign, Stella Artois brought back the now-classic characters of Jeff Bridges' The Dude ("The Big Lebowski") and Sarah Jessica Park's Carrie Bradshaw ("Sex and the City"). In the ad, the recognizable characters cause confusion at a bar when they choose a Stella Artois instead of their usual White Russian and Cosmo drink orders in an effort to "help end the global water crisis" and drum up awareness around Stella's conservation efforts.