Cannes Lions: Creative Data winners 2023  /

Beer brand Stella Artois has been awarded the Creative Data Grand Prix for a campaign that uses data to shine a light on more than 600 years of heritage.

Created by GUT, Buenos Aires, the series of print and outdoor ads shows paintings by celebrated articles, like Van Gogh and Manet, and all the way back to Breughel – each one featuring people drinking beer.

Datapoints, such as the year the picture was painted, its geographical location, the shape of the glass and colour of the liquid, have been run through a specially created algorithm to calculate the probability that the subjects are drinking Stella Artois – with that number used to caption the painting.

The campaign also came to life in an exhibition at the Bellas Artes Museum in Buenos Aires, where visitors could use an augmented reality app to scan the original works of art, which would then be overlaid with their Artois Probability score.

Jury president Samantha Hernández Díaz said the questions her jury were asking from the start of the judging process were: ‘How does knowing more make things different? How does knowing more make things better? That is the heart of creative data.’

In this case, data has given a legacy brand a modern and creative way to connect the story of its provenance with today’s beer (and art) lovers. And it’s combined one of the oldest media with some of the newest to create the ultimate historical social proof, effectively saying: ‘people have been enjoying Stella for centuries – there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy it too.’

Stella Artois’ parent company, AB InBev, which was named Cannes Lions’ Creative Marketer of the Year for the second year in a row in 2023, also won a Grand Prix in the Entertainment for Sport Category, for its DreamCaster campaign, for Michelob Ultra.

Creative Data Gold Lion winners / 

Doppelganger, for Chipotle, by GALE, New York

Fabric of England, for Show Racism the Red Card, by Craft, London