Labatt Breweries of Canada

"The Stella Artois Gifting Shoppe"

Labatt-owned Stella Artois wanted to celebrate fathers. When it comes to celebrating those who are tasked with raising the next generation of gentlemen, there is perhaps no event more important than Father's Day.

Veritas was challenged to celebrate fathers and, on an emotional level, link the Stella Artois brand to Father's Day celebrations across the country. The idea needed to drive purchase of the Stella Artois Chalice as a Father's Day gift.

The campaign was specifically targeted to urban males, legal drinking age to 35 who are university or college educated with a healthy income.

Research showed that celebrating mom on Mother's Day was easy — people could buy bouquets of flowers and Hallmark greeting cards to show their gratitude and appreciate. But Father's Day is a trickier gifting occasion. The agency identified an opportunity to position Stella Artois as the solution — not only a great gift in itself, but a great resource for Father's Day gifting.

So it developed the first-ever Father's Day shopping experience called "The Stella Artois Gifting Shoppe." Veritas partnered with leading men's retailer GotStyle, which curated the store merchandise. Additional partnerships with brands including Cheese Boutique, Mankind, Style Garage and Try That were also secured.

The Gifting Shoppe was both an online shopping destination and a bricks-and-mortar retail location on Queen Street West in Toronto for a limited time in the lead-up to Father's Day. Both online and in-store customers could choose from a hand-picked selection of unique and premium gifts. The showcase gift was the Stella Artois Chalice, which could be personalized with custom engraving.

The agency also partnered with style expert Glen Baxter (former host of Fashion Television) to promote the store as our "Stella Artois Gifting Expert." National media relations in French and English drove awareness of Stella Artois Chalice (and other items from the online shoppe) in gift guides. There was also an opening night celebration at the store for key influencers such as Glenn Lewis, Sunny Vawk, Craig Strickland, KardinalOffishall, Suresh John, Naomi Snieckus and Adam Van Koeverden.

The program generated 16.3 million media impressions through 49 separate stories, saw more than 250 attendees at the influencer launch event and the brand distributed over 2,205 Stella Artois chalices.