Making heritage modern / Playing up a brand’s heritage can have benefits and drawbacks. On one hand, heritage can be a sign of credibility and trustworthiness – if a product has lasted for centuries, then it must be doing something right. However, there’s also a risk that it appears old-fashioned and out of date. This campaign’s prominent use of data and technology coupled with paintings that are, in some cases, centuries old, helps Stella Artois achieve a ‘best of both worlds’ balance, allowing the brand to appear modern while drawing attention to its heritage. With sales of craft beers from microbreweries continuing to grow and erode market share from more established players, appearing modern while still being able to claim a trusted heritage is a smart strategy.
Arresting dissonance / The data + fine art combination is also a key factor in making the ads noticeable. Taking something as recognisably historical as a 16th century oil painting and adding an anachronistic data point gives it an arresting quality, more likely to make people pause on it to work out what’s going on, and shifting the viewer from low-attention to high-attention processing. This is key to increasing effectiveness, with research from Ipsos finding that ‘advertising processed with high attention has a profoundly more significant impact and should be the aspiration of all forms of communication’.
Celebrity and social proof / Stella Artois also benefits by implying an association with some of the world’s greatest painters. The campaign creates a link between the brand’s premium beer and luminaries such as Van Gogh and Manet, suggesting a tacit celebrity endorsement from the art world. The fact that these old masters and impressionists may have documented centuries of people drinking Stella Artois also demonstrates a form of historical social proof – ie, ‘people have enjoyed our beer for over 600 years, so you’ll probably enjoy it too’.
