From challenging category norms and changing the way the world thinks about beer, to award winning packaging.
Be it beers wines or spirits, our impressive track record, and more impoprtantly sales of the brands themselves speak for themselves.
From large multi-channel international campaigns to activations with small local breweries, everything we create is crafted with the intention to drive standout, challenge perception, foster consideration and deliver results.
Here is a flavour (excuse the pun) of some of the fabulous brands we have successfully worked with over the years and some of the fabulous results we are delighted to be able to claim as our own.
We don’t think straight.
Peroni Nastro Azzuro
The founder of The Black Arts Company, Ian Cassie, was at the heart of the highly successful global launch of Peroni Nastro Azzurro.
He came up with the “Italian Style” brand positioning as well as creating and directing the ground-breaking Cinema commercials. Experiential marketing, then in its’ infancy, included the world’s first “Pop-up Shop”. Probably the best decision was the Peroni beer glass that helped drive dramatic volume increases of what became the highly profitable global premium beer brand.
‘La Dolce Vita’ is the most famous Italian film of all time. Produced in 1959 it began a global obsession with Italian style. Peroni re-made a short version which was feature on both Cinema and TV advertising across the world. Directed by Ian Cassie it was shot in Cape Town, Stellenbosch and of course Rome.
The brands beautiful tale of a calender being shot next to Lake Como featured the American R&B hit ‘My Girl’ written by Otis Redding Smokey Robinson and Ronald White and was re-recorded for the spot by Mario Biondi. It gave the highly popular Italian singer his first top 10 hit in his home country.
This glass sold 88% more beer than a plain one.
This was responsible for the arrival of experiential marketing and was the first 'Pop Up Shop' in the World.
Nastro Azzuro was the first brand in Italy to use the white space advertising made popular in the US by Volkswagen.
The brand used leading fashion photographers to replace those who concentrated on shoot beer bottles.
Love Lane Brewing
Their first Brewery was under the railway arches on Liverpool’s Love Lane. If you love making great beers and you’re on Love Lane it didn’t take them too long to name the Brewery or the beer that was created there.
Love Lane was born.
It was inevitable that a t-shirt should be designed to celebrate that all of their beers were originated under the rail way arch. We were struck that this wasn’t the only thing conceived under a railway arch in Liverpool on a Saturday evening.
London Cru
Award winning Art Direction & Design by Black Arts Creative Ryan Hadley for London Cru Winery.
Sabai Wine
A Red Bull Brand. This was created almost 15 year ago and the brand continues to use it across the world to this day.
Meantime Brewing
When you go from promoting a wildly successful global beer brand to a tiny craft brewery hidden away in South East London there are inevitably good, and not so good, changes. Firstly the budget drops from high to non-existent. Secondly, there is no money to spend and thirdly you can’t do much because you can’t afford to.
However, the freedom from International corporate “pushbacks”, removing the fear of making mistakes and having “to think outside the money box” (because there isn’t one) is, especially if you are a shareholder in the new enterprise, liberating.
The Londoner Campaign, based on the premise that hardly anyone that lives in London these days originated from there but all rapidly become Londoners, ran for one week only in Time Out and one night only as a half-page in the Evening Standard.
It announced Meantime as being at the forefront of the Craft Beer Revolution and if only by giving the salesforce of 2 people something to set them apart from the growing Craft Brewery sector, help get into London’s pubs and bars.
A triumph.
Meantime Brewery was subsequently sold to SAB Miller (subsequently themselves taken over by AB Inbev) for a substantial amount and is now, along with Peroni, owned by Asahi
Reading Time: 49 seconds
Gorum Zero
93% Increase.
Sales almost double helped by a brave OOH/Social Media Campaign
For hundreds of years people have enjoyed beer because apart from anything else “it’s good for you”
“Consumer demand to produce a greater variety of beer types, including alcohol-free beers, may also help to increase the number of beers which may have greater potential to improve health, with lower levels of alcohol, while still being tasty products.” Aston University.
This research appeased the wrath of the ASA and contributed to almost a doubling of demand.
Butcombe Brewery’s “Goram” brand has shown that brewing a Zero Alcohol Beer in such a way that it tastes exactly like a “normal” beer has an enormous appeal to consumers.
‘Gorum Zero’ Taste Test.
A cold day in Bristol, just before Christmas, underneath a Banksy, we asked a representative sample of people what they thought of Goram Zero. The results were amazing!
Out of Home advertising across Bristol
Leicester Square, London
‘Tall Tales’ Crocodile in the River Avon
With a budget of less than £5k, by exploiting an old urban myth of a crocodile in the River Avon, via a clever combination of a staged ‘crocodile’ appearance in the river, caught on camera by ‘passers’ by for social media and strategically placed ‘official’ warning signs, The Black Arts Co. delivered 2.1m views on Tik Tok, coverage in the Mirror, Daily Mail and ITV and client sales growth of 193% in the first month alone.
Grolsch
Plisner Urquell
The BlackArtsCo’s founder, Ian Cassie, has always believed that any Advertising, Marketing or Brand Awareness Campaign should feature something physical, something that is slightly incongruous.
Whether it was the world’s first “Pop-up shop’(Peroni) or flying two WW2 Aircraft down the Thames, releasing three Million Poppies (Royal British Legion) drive a Campaign and help create the resultant brand fame and fortune.
A restaurant in Shoreditch for Lidl did no harm to its growing reputation as it helped make consumers aware of the extraordinary quality the “cheap” supermarket offered. A very “different” thought, for a then tiny UK Vacuum cleaner brand (Vax), both re-introduced it to the market and lead to a rapid seven-fold increase in market share to edge Dyson, at least in sales quantity)
A film for the “One for the Boys” Charity led by Samuel L Jackson on BBC1s "Graham Norton Show” triggered an instant, dramatic increase in applications for an NHS Cancer Screening.
The World creates some 2.5 quintillions* of data every single day which is effectively a snowstorm, so it becomes almost impossible, across the digital space, to see any messages at all, so relying entirely on exposure through Social and Conventional media only is ill advised. (* A quintillion is one billion, billion)
Over the years Ian has overseen many, many examples of what is lovingly called “thinking outside the box” but believes it's better to concentrate on "ticking the box” marked “Sales"
But standing out is vital and The Black Arts continues to create these Campaigns by simply “Not Thinking Straight”
A current BlackArtsCo Campaign reveals three current examples of exactly what we mean.
