Amstel Lager South African Return, Brand Relaunch and Social Media Launch

by Gord · Portfolio, work · 20 Dec 2016

I’m really glad to have recently rediscovered some of this work on an old hard drive, even though I would love to have more of it on file. It was an account I worked on for three years, between 2011 and 2014, during my time at OwenKessel (later merged with LeoBurnett).

In 2011, Amstel Lager had recently relaunched in South Africa, having been unavailable locally for a few years. The brand’s absence was due to SAB’s long-held distribution licence expiring, with Heineken in Holland deciding to distribute in South Africa via Brandhouse/Diageo instead.

The brand faded from the hearts and minds of the SA public. When OwenKessel won the account in 2011, I would form part of the team responsible for bringing the brand and its “Take Your Time” positioning back.

Together with my Art Director Partner Beth Dessington, my dear friend and ECD Donovan Bryan, and the awesome team at OwenKessel, we created TTL collateral of every kind, for three years of my time there.

Just a very few examples of ongoing social content written over the time.

We established Amstel’s first online/social presence, on Facebook. Growing the page from zero to over 150K likes just two years… no mean feat for Facebook in the early 2010s.

I wrote literally hundreds of these. It’s nice to see some of them again after all this time.

Music activations and sponsorships were a major part of Amstel’s positioning in South Africa during the time. The annual SA Music (SAMA) Awards were a huge sponsorship property for the brand, which would result in a multi-touchpoint campaign every year…

Storyboards for an Amstel SAMAs TVC we produced in 2013

We made a huge amount of work over the years. I wish I had access to more of it, but I’m glad to have found some of these examples on file. We made radio, TV, OOH, packaging, planned and executed events, and every other aspect of TTL for a massive brand, for years. All of it made with love and real attention to detail.

I was also heavily involved in Amstel’s award-winning “Boxer” TVC and “Chef” TVCs. Please note though, that unlike everything else included in this post so far, the main concepts and writing for the TVCs were handled by Donovan Bryan and Mike Cook, and Donovan Bryan and Stephanie Larsen, respectively. I was certainly on the team for them, and very involved in getting them over the line. But I was, as they say, “in the room” and I can’t take the credit for cracking the main TVC ideas, myself.

I’m including them below, however, because they give great context as to how we as a team approached the brand and it’s repositioning in the market. And, because I was very close to them and am very proud of the work we did as a team.