Iconic Australians go a ‘Long Way for a Beer’ in adventure and interview series for Great Northern Brewing Co via Clemenger BBDO
Clemenger BBDO has taken famous Australians on adventures in Far North Queensland to bring Carlton & United Breweries’ Great Northern Brewing Co into popular culture with social-first adventure and interview series ‘Long Way for a Beer’.
As The Beer For Up Here, Great Northern’s advertising and brand has been built with the Australian Great Outdoors as its stunning backdrop. The agency believes it was important to create a series that embodies that beauty, while uncovering more about the famous Australians who are part of the series, and ultimately revealing how much better they are in the outdoors.
Famous Australian guests featured in Season One include one of Australia’s best – and best loved – sporting heroes, who’s also an award-winning chart-topping Aussie singer. Season One recently launched with homegrown global music superstar and athlete, Cody Simpson.
Great Northern partnered with YouTube sensation, filmmaker Beau Miles, famed for his unique outdoor adventures and can-do attitude, to create the six-episode YouTube series, which is part adventure show, part interview show.
In each long-form episode, Beau and a famous Australian guest embark on an exciting adventure with a stripped-down set of gear in a remote Far North Queensland location, overcoming a range of ‘interesting’ challenges, before having a beer and reflecting on their journey around a campfire.
The campaign was led by Clems, working closely with its recently formed social, PR and influence practice Chemistry Set in collaboration with MADE THIS, in-house agency partner 1House and PHD. It continues the strong partnership Clems and Great Northern have fostered over many years to grow the brand to become Australia’s best-selling beer.
The campaign is designed to build on Great Northern’s strong brand story, fuel further growth and cement its icon status as Australia’s number one beer, by inserting it into popular culture.
The series will be amplified through supporting assets across social platforms, including the famous Australian guests’ platforms, media amplification, and OOH. Teasers for the season launch and each guests’ adventure and interview episode will drop on Meta and YouTube, with the series premiering on YouTube.
Locations for each episode capture the beauty and diverse landscapes of Far North Queensland, reflecting Great Northern’s famous heritage and masterbrand platform as ‘The Beer For Up Here’, and its belief that the greatness of Australian nature, and being outdoors with mates, brings out the best in our nature.
Says Marketing Manager, Great Northern Brewing Co Zac Gelman: “The Great Northern brand was built in the Great Outdoors and the Far North. We’re thrilled to use this setting as a showcase to create Australia’s next adventure and interview series, in which we re-connect famous Australians with Australia’s Great Outdoors.”
Says Clemenger BBDO Executive Creative Director Ant Phillips: “With Long Way for a Beer, we wanted to continue Great Northern’s authentic story, but tell it in a modern and progressive way. As the beer that believes nature brings out the best in our nature, we enlisted the best natured person we know in Beau Miles to take some Australian legends on some unique adventures. The six part adventure and interview series is the beginning of Great Northern’s move into entertainment and we’re excited to bring it to life.”
“Great Northern is more than a beer, it’s a true lifestyle. We’re excited to be bringing its many fans more ways to enjoy the brand and what it represents to them,” adds Clemenger BBDO Chief Creative Officer Adrián Flores.
Client – Carlton & United Breweries (Great Northern Brewing Company)
General Manager – Marketing: Nicole McMillan
Head of Beer – Ben Eyles
Marketing Manager, GNBC – Zac Gelman
Senior Brand Manager – Paddy Wallace
Creative Agency – Clemenger BBDO
Chief Creative Officer: Adrián Flores
Executive Creative Directors: Ant Phillips. Tristan Graham
Creatives: Lara Smith, Esther Parsons
Chief Strategy & Experience Officer: Simon Wassef
Head of Cultural Design: Rhian Mason
Senior Social & Content Manager: Elly Brand
Head of Strategy: Brooke Thompson
Strategy Partner: Brigitte Bayard
Managing Partner: Scott Balalas, Jason Melhuish
Group Business Director: Sam Siddons
Business Director: Lauren Mayne
Business Manager: Mack Horton
Executive Producer: Karolina Bozajkovska
Production Company – MADE THIS
Director and Editor: Thomas Pollard
Executive Producer: Ainslee Littlemore
Lead Producer: Callum Smit
Editor: Jennifer Cahir
Photographer: Krystle Wright
Social Agency – 1House Asahi
Creative Director – Rohan Lancaster
Senior Creatives – Ellen Fromm & Steph Kitchin
Editors – Lachlan Millsom & Taylor Curry
26 Comments
This is horribly forced. And for nothing but a warm beer?
It wants its content strategy back.
C’mon mate, you can’t be serious.
Who wouldn’t take an op with a beer company for an adventure lead by Beau?
Usually when you do native content like this, you’re supposed to be a little more discrete with the product placement. That poster is so obnoxious.
This is the new way of doing ads. Long form. Social first. Well done team!
*Googles* ‘Who is Cody Simpson?’
There’s nothing new about long form content for brands, especially beer. It died out 10 years ago because no one cared.
awesome to see Great Northern working with legends like Beau. The social for this is spot on
Is it just men again?
This is what happens when you leave the account managers to come up with an idea.
This is embarrassing for Clems.
makes me feel like a beer.. its 10am, they are doing something right.
Sprinkling a bit of Yeti-style long form into their approach is worth a go, despite all the naysayers above.
Curious to see how this goes.
And it’s not like they can’t cut this down for all the regular stuff, too.
To watch.
He’s a tip for you. Content has to be entertaining, informative and interesting. This is none of that.
Cody Simpson (had to Google) looks like he doesn’t want to be there. Neither would I to be fair.
2 episodes long.
162k organic views and some idiot from an agency calls this dull, and boring…
Some of you have no idea what you’d do without a media company hocking your average idea. People don’t care about your ‘big ideas’ but they are watching this.
good move investing in partnerships true to the brand, Beau is a gem. Love the social
let’s see if that converts to sales. Me don’t think so.
As someone who watches Beau on the regular, this was a great watch. Yes there’s some forced product placement, but his fan base is gonna lap it up because it feels authentically Beau.
Oh please! 162 organic views? Like this isn’t support with paid media as per the press release that outlines media amplification? Views are such a false metric when you buy them. Love to know the view-through rate (i couldn’t get past about a minute). Would be better buying airtime on a secondary FTA channel and running this as a program. Perhaps this was the original idea given the length of the episode and lack of a compelling intro hook.
This went for too long and was very boring. I couldn’t get to the end.
Has officially sunk.
More Beau in the world can only be a good thing, so this is pretty good in my books.
It appears Clems no longer use 3rd party production companies, rather putting everything through their internal one.
The end is here.
The start of something disastrous