Since 2017, Beck’s revolves around the rallying cry “You make it legendary”. This basically means putting the brand’s most differentiating ingredient in focus: its consumers. Following that principle, Beck’s wanted to create several experiential brand experiences involving fans all over Germany. With soundpils, we wanted Beck’s fans to interact with the brand in a way they’ve never done before – giving the possibility to leave their own mark on a new product and connecting real-life experiences with it. All of this eventually needed to merge into a real, straight to stores, limited edition, available on- and offline – to once again emphasize Beck’s innovative and experiential approach to engaging its exploring target group in an immersive way.

Since 1873, Beck’s has been brewing its worldwide known pils with nothing but the finest ingredients: hop, malt and yeast. A quality procedure that is standardized in Germany, because of the purity law from 1516, which legally forbids to use any other ingredients than the named ones for brewing. So, when we wanted to underline the brand’s campaign slogan “You make it legendary” that allows fans to actually become an ingredient of the beer, we faced a problem. We looked at science and found a generally known fact: Plants grow better when you talk to them. This applies to our hops as well! So we put theory to practice and invited our fans to a real-life experience that eventually lead to a real Beck’s product with a new and refined taste – and dozens of stories and voices behind it.

Freedom is a core value of the Beck’s brand. But in order to regain meaningfulness and relevancy in its target group, Beck’s had to redefine freedom – by making it tangible and experienceable. For this purpose, we needed to turn a traditional TVC brand into a non-traditional online entertainment brand. The new role of Beck’s: encourage millennials to make choices without fearing the consequences. Or in short: Go ahead, don’t be afraid and show the world what’s possible – because “You make it legendary”. A credo that calls for real-life participation, creating and doing. The strategy was translated into interactive ideas that put the consumer first and the beer second, showing everyone that “great moments without you, simply aren’t great” and of course, that Beck’s without you, is nothing but a beer.

To realize this idea, Beck’s had to put a scientific theory to best practice and make it scalable. We took a crew of sound system engineers to Hallertau, the world’s biggest hop-planting area, and installed hundreds of speakers in the Beck’s field – with heavy machinery. The result? A festival-like sound installation that infused the hop from every angle for the best possible growing effect without disturbing nature too much. On the other hand, we set up an outdoor installation in Berlin that was both visually and audibly connected to the speakers in South Germany: a mobile, noise-isolated speaker cabin with live-recording function.

The idea resulted in a three-minute documentary that created 29 million social media contacts and has been viewed more than 8 million times in only two weeks, driving engagement on the Beck’s Facebook and Instagram channels. The video itself, despite its three-minute length, has been viewed 2.17 minutes on average with 27 % of the audience watching all of the documentary. But most importantly: we created a whole new, real product, in which the consumer became key ingredient. The Beck’s soundpils hop has been harvested and brewed into a beer with provable, refreshing new aroma. Bottles have been sold in major cities all over Germany. Last but not least, we sent a sixpack-mailing to almost every participant and instantly mailed them their “sound act” video footage by mail.