Carlton Dry has taught students of the Temple of Dry how to be like the beer: free from complication, perfectly balanced, never bitter and always smooth.
Created by Special Group Australia, the integrated campaign is an extension of Carlton Dry’s brand platform, Be Like the Beer, which celebrates the qualities and brewing credentials of Carlton Dry.
The platform encourages Australians to match the uncomplicated qualities of Carlton Dry beer.
“The strategy behind the brand platform was to acknowledge that life is super complicated at the moment - probably never more so than today,” Special Group creative director Vincent Osmond tells AdNews.
“It was this coincidence where we thought we could look to this unlikely inspiration that is a beer to find what we’re all looking for: a way of living, of being - an uncomplicated life.
“That’s what Carlton Dry prides itself on. Being an uncomplicated, really easy drinking beer.”
The brand platform was then built based upon the beer’s attributes of being smooth, free from bitterness and always balanced.
Osmond and fellow creative director Jade Manning went on to use these attributes to come up with a “belief system” that simultaneously celebrates the beer and living an uncomplicated life .
“That’s where the Temple of Dry came from,” says Osmond.
“It’s a tongue-in-cheek way of expressing to ‘be like the beer’ but also a place where people can go to to learn the ways of Dry, to learn how to be more balanced and learn how to be smooth and laugh and learn how to be less bitter.”
The hero 60 second TVC features students, under the watchful eye of Master Dry, dedicating themselves to this belief system.
Throughout the television spots, Master Dry is seen enlightening his students on the philosophy of Carlton Dry while they undertake rigorous training to be more like the beer such as, walking on water, balancing on top of beer cans, and pulling out bottles from troughs of ice.
Bringing the campaign to life was not easy though. While Osmond and Manning had the idea in the works for some time pre-COVID, it only started to gain motion over the last six months.
“It has been six months of rewriting scripts and interrogating the story and the location,” says Manning.
“This world that we were creating, there were so many iterations of where it would be located. Is it in Australia? Is it in a South American Jungle or a Tibetan valley? There were so many different worlds that we were playing in and eventually getting to where we were today.”
After putting out a brief to directors both locally and around the world, New Zealand director Adam Gunser, from Goodoil Films, was selected to direct the campaign.
With international travel in a halt, Osmond and Manning say it was lucky they chose to work with Gunser as they ended up deciding to shoot the campaign in the mountains of the picturesque New Zealand city Queenstown and the country had come out of lockdown.
While neither the agency or client could be present, they had to rely on tech to watch the campaign being shot in real time over three days.
“You’re handing over a lot of control to a third party. So we had to make sure that we got a really good production company. Which was partly why we explored the production companies we did and why we went with Adam,” says Manning.
“They went through a meticulous planning process - even down to the location. We were shooting in this beautiful location in Queenstown but that location was chosen because it had phenomenal wi-fi signal and that we wouldn’t get uninterrupted transmission between us and them.”
Other parties involved in the process included Blockhead VFX who helped to create the temple in post-production and Rumble Studios who composed the music.
Despite the complicated process to shoot a campaign celebrating the uncomplicatedness of the brand, the campaign came out a success.
Carlton Dry marketing manager Sarah Wilcox says the campaign highlights what Carlton Dry drinkers already love about the beer.
“When we talk to our consumers, they tell us that Carlton Dry is the most easy-drinking beer on the market, super-refreshing with an uncomplicated taste profile, and that’s why they love it,” says Wilcox.
“Carlton Dry has been masterfully brewed, to strip itself of unnecessary complications.”
The integrated Carlton Dry campaign will run across TV, out-of-home, digital, radio and social.
Credits
Creative Agency: Special Group Australia
Founding Partner: Lindsey Evans
Founding Partner: Cade Heyde
Strategy Partner: Dave Hartmann
CCO & Partner: Julian Schreiber
CCO & Partner: Tom Martin
Creative Directors: Jade Manning, Vincent Osmond
Senior Creatives: Harry Stanford, Nick Plomp
Designer: Liam Kenny
Team Lead: Tori Lopez
Business Director: James Steer
Business Director: Laura Little
Executive Producer: Paul Johnston
Head Of Production: Nick Lilley
Client: Carlton & United Breweries
General Manager - Marketing: Brian Phan
Acting Head of Contemporary Brands: Antonia Ciorciari
Carlton Dry Marketing Manager: Sarah Wilcox
Carlton Dry Brand Manager: Deanna Christian
Cultural Production Specialist: Maria Tran
Production Company: Goodoil Films
Director: Adam Gunser
Executive Producer: Sam Long
Producers: Andrew McLean, Katie Kempe
Director of Photography: Ginny Loane
Offline edit : The Editors / Mark Burnett
Post Production: Blockhead VFX
Music and Sound House: Rumble Studios
Executive Producer: Michael Gie
Sound Engineer: Tone Aston / Cam Milne
Production Company: Louis&Co
Photographer: Mat Baker
Retouching: The Bakery Retouching
Media agency: PHD & Cubhouse
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