In 1366, the monastery servants from the city of Leuven built the Den Hoorn brewery for their own use. After almost four centuries later, the history of the world-famous Belgian beer Stella Artois began. In 1708, Sebastian Artois became head brewer at Den Hoorn. After nine years, Sebastian named the brewery after his name. Under Sebastian Artois’s leadership, the brewery began to expand, and the fame of Artois spread far beyond Leuven. Despite ties with noble Belgian families, Sebastian’s descendants invariably led the company, passing on the knowledge and secrets of family brewing to each other. In 1926, the Artois family brewery produced a pale filtered beer called Stella Artois (Beamish, 2000). For Belgium, famous for its ales, the production of bottom-fermented beer was a curiosity, but the brewery with a 600-year history has managed to achieve a delicious taste. Since 1930, Stella Artois has been exported abroad.
Manufacturers pay significant attention to Stella Artois brand advertising. The mark has developed at a high pace, and today one could hardly meet a person who did not hear about Stella Artois. Brand commercials sometimes even look like short films. Eventually, due to infusions into advertising campaigns, the concern managed to increase brand recognition by 61 percent (Betrams et al., 2019). However, it was noted that due to the emphasis on the high level and image of the drink, many began to perceive it as an unattainable elite product. For this reason, in 2008, the advertising strategy was revised, and the videos began to be given a light character, sometimes even with a touch of humor.
The digital development strategy aims to help bring back the popularity of products despite the ongoing decline in the country’s pub industry. Due to the pandemic, pubs and establishments’ popularity has fallen, negatively affecting the company’s sales (Betrams et al., 2019). To accelerate the implementation of the strategy, AB InBev is turning to technologies that increase the loyalty of pub-goers. The company launched an app that allows fans to give friends a pint of Stella Artois beer (Farwell, 2022). Brewers Guinness and London Pride Fuller are pursuing similar strategies, using NFC and real-time marketing initiatives, respectively (Farwell, 2022). The leadership of Stella Artois, through digital strategies, is utilizing the power of its online community in future projects, especially on the topic of digital gifts and exchange, to reverse the ongoing decline in the country’s pub industry. As a result, it contributes to the increase in sales and development of the company.
Stella Artois started its market entry in South Africa in 2017. There were some difficulties in entering the market in South Africa as beer consumption was lower compared to other countries. Moreover, at that time, the market was dominated by SAB, which AB InBev merged in 2016, with a market share of 85%, driven primarily by brands such as Castle and Castle Lite (Farwell, 2022). Stella Artois has been collaborating with AB InBev Zone on all of its properties since the very beginning (Beamish, 2000). Consequently, in order to work out the expansion strategy, it was necessary to cooperate with Ricardo Tadeu, who at that time was in the territory planning for development.
Thereby, one applied the digital strategy and combined it with issues in the country. The idea lay in using South Africa’s current water supply and scarcity problem by moving into a water initiative to help bring the brand to that market (Landa, 2022). Authorities worked with Water.org to launch a public meeting called The BALAD Water Campaign, which was presented at the Davos conference (Landa, 2022). In South Africa, access to water has always been an urgent topic that could be used to launch. Namely, to encourage consumers to have easier access to water through special commissions. Thus, the digital strategy, along with an effective solution to current issues, helped successfully enter the South African market.
References
Beamish, P. W. (2000). The global branding of Stella Artois. University of Western Ontario.
Bertrams, K., Marmol, J. D., Geerts, S., & Poelmans, E. (2019). Becoming the world’s biggest brewer: Artois, Piedboeuf, and Interbrew. Oxford University Press.
Farwell, J. P. (2022). The corporate warrior: Successful strategies from military leaders to win your business battles. Rothstein Publishing.
Landa, R. (2022). Strategic creativity: A business field guide to advertising, branding, and design. Routledge.