The all-important pour shot is still there, but Labatt is taking a more stylistic approach to beer advertising with a new TV spot promoting its Alexander Keith’s Hop Series.
Developed by Red Urban, with post-production by New York-based Psyop, the 30-second English and French “Metamorphosis” (“Métamorphose”) spot uses a combination of live-action and CGI to create a time-lapse image of the cascade hop growing and finally morphing into a bottle of the new Keith’s product.
The CGI-heavy spot, which debuted Monday, represents a significant reversal from Labatt’s standard creative approach, said brand manager Mike Bascom, with much of the creative development occurring in post-production. “There was a lot more work in post than you would have in a traditional TV spot, but a little bit less up-front stuff,” he told Marketing.
“We wanted to make sure that everything we did to talk about these beers was very different,” said Bascom of the creative approach, which employs a nature documentary-type voiceover to describe the evolution of the hop. “To create the awareness we need, the TV creative also needed to be just as different as the beers.”
Related
• Labatt’s new Keiths brew takes aim at craft crowd
Labatt tested a number of different creative concepts with consumers before settling on the final approach, said Bascom. “The consumer is the boss, so we talked to beer drinkers across the country,” he said. “This is the one that resonated with them the most and achieved what we needed.”
The new Keith’s Hop Series has been trickling into stores for the past month. Bascom said Labatt has seen higher-than anticipated demand for the product. “People who have typically been afraid of tasting what they would call ‘hoppy’ beers, really appreciate it when they taste it,” he said. “[The beers] have got a nice bitterness, but they’re still very approachable and drinkable.”
Labatt has also created what Bascom called a “mobile brewery” that starts a coast-to-coast tour today. The functioning brew-house, developed by Mosaic, demonstrates the brewing process and will stop at beer festivals and some of the brewer’s bigger accounts.
The media campaign from UM Canada uses a combination of English and French specialty and conventional TV to reach what Bascom called a “pretty wide range” of consumers, ranging from legal drinking age to 49.
The spots will run for the next two months, he said. The ad is also appearing on Alexander’s Keith’s YouTube channel and will also run as a cinema spot, he said.
