When I think of beer advertising the images that spring immediately to mind are Fuller's London Pride and Honey Dew ads, Boddingtons and Melanie Sykes, Stella Artois being reassuringly expensive, and punning Aussie ads for amber nectar.
Generally the common denominator being some sort of focus on the contents of the bottle or tin in question.
Driving home last night I spotted something a bit different from the aforementioned Stella Artois, in the shape of a huge roadside poster highlighting the fact that Stella's corrugated packaging is 100% recycled.
Digging deeper I find this "Recyclage De Luxe" messaging is part of a wider campaign to position the brew as an environmentally-friendly tipple. Other print-based promo includes an ad focusing on the amount of recycled glass used in its bottles. On-pack and in-store promotion surrounds the ‘Hedge Fund' (you can see why these advertising types are so well paid) activities, whereby Stella will plant hedgerows for every multi-pack purchased. It's a large-scale project that will involve hundreds of thousands of trees and saplings, thus helping to absorb some of that nasty CO2 we keep generating.
It certainly caught my attention, and anything that helps consumers better understand print and packaging's environmental credentials beyond the usual "save trees" claptrap has to be good news. So I for one will raise a pint to that.
