Carlsberg Beer is beer. As such, it's a social substance. Beer brands have forever been claiming that they are the beer for good friends and social situations. Lowenbrau with their old jingle, "Here's to good friends, because tonight is kinda special..." Or Michelob's attempts to own the concept of night-time partying. Even Bud Light's recent campaign about superstitions is really about bonding, socialness, friends. The list of attempts by beer makers to position themselves as the real social beer is as long as the list of beers.
But this week, Carlsberg shattered the cliches while positioning itself as a brand for close (very close) friends. The brand conducted an elaborate reality-prank and brings us all along for the ride with this film:
Here's why I love this reality-prank idea:
One, Carlsberg isn't flatly claiming their beer is for those times when friends are together. They are demonstrating it.
Two, they are dramatically associating their brand with the concept of not just "friends," but of friends who would practically kill for each other.
Three, they are helping create a new medium for branding, the reality-prank (here's another one Carlsberg did recently), where the message is in the outcome of the marketing activity, and not in the activity itself.
It's that last one that makes this particular idea, and other reality-pranks like it, so powerful. Carlsberg didn't film actors pretending to be friends. They filmed real friends in action. The hardship these friends go through to help each other is real (to the aiding friend, anyway, which is all that matters). It's not staged.
After the reveal at the end, we, as potential consumers, appreciate and admire these very relieved friends as we see them hug each other and hear the clinks of their beer bottles. It's in their relief that we witness actual friendship. And witnessing actual friendship like this touches us. It exposes us. It makes us question ourselves, and our own friends. It gives new meaning and gravity to the whole tired concept of "friendship" in the context of beer advertising. It makes us wonder if any of our friends would do that for us (friends of mine, don't answer that).
And it is at that moment of reflection, the outcome, that Carlsberg has you like no other beer brand.
Now we could debate about whether it's right or wrong for a brand to pull these reality-pranks and disrupt someone's life like this. I'll save that for another post.
But what's clear with this one film is that Carlsberg has deftly positioned itself not as an obtusely "social beer," but as something far more meaningful: as THE beer for ACTUAL friends.
And they didn't even use a jingle.
