Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Goose Island Brewery is often the king of video and social media content. They have a great grasp for what the customer wants and an eye for how to tell a story. The communication team at Goose Island has a large social reach on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and even Snapchat. This reach and strategy covers both advertisements and generally fun content.
Goals
Goose Island Brewery approached LooseKeys to help with some type treatment for a few different Snapchat advertisements. They wanted to highlight their beer Sofie; a sparkling Belgian Style Farmhouse Ale. Sofie is a beer that is paired with food and also tends to be purchased by those who are fond of Champagne. Goose Island wanted to target those non-typical beer drinkers.
Snapchat is able to really capture the attention of it’s users but you only have a few seconds, whether that’s in a story or advertisement. Goose Island understood this and it was our goal to make sure the type was quickly readable and entertaining.
Approach
Goose Island sent over a few different videos that were edited with music, so this made our task a bit easier. Having the framework for timing helped us to figure out what was going to work for the animation. After exploring a few different concepts we landed on something that helped to mirror some of their other marketing. It involved hand drawn type. The hand drawn type treatment allowed us to play and have some fun with the animation. Fun & interesting are the key points when looking to do anything on Snapchat.
“Being a huge beer fan and living in Chicago, it was a real treat to work with Goose Island Brewery on this project. Not only were we helping to promote a brewery many people have grown up with but we also were able to explore Snapchat marketing. We had been using Snapchat for awhile now and I had a very good understanding of what worked and what captured my attention” — Brad Chmielewski (Creative Director, LooseKeys)
Once the overall treatment was approved, it was fairly straight forward to plug it into each one of the Snapchat ads. Since we didn’t want each one to feel the same, we added a few other drawn elements onto the screen to add movement.
A lot of the animation for this was done inside Photoshop. It was nice to get outside of the typical video format and use software to make something that hopefully wasn’t just skipped as users went through their Snapchat feed.
As you start to break free of the traditional 16x9 format, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities for storytelling. Who would have thought that one 90 degree turn would create so many new creative opportunities?
Result
Goose Island Brewery was able to showcase four Snapchat advertisements that proved a good testing ground for the platform. Keeping it focused on more beer allowed the viewer to not only think about their beer Sofie but also explore what else Goose Island has to offer that was beyond the fizzy yellow stuff.
The LooseKeys team really brought our content to life. It was our first time putting paid media on Snapchat and the response was overwhelmingly positive. — Ken Hunnemeder (Content Development Specialist, Goose Island Beer Co.)
