As we researched the subject, we found that Carlsberg’s main ingredients – barley, hops and yeast – have some rather unexpected properties. We learned that they contain lots of vitamin B and sillicum, both of which are good for hair and skin. We also launched research that suggested that a lot of men would feel more comfortable buying beauty products from a manly brand like Carlsberg. Based on those facts, we decided to break into an industry obsessed with quality ingredients: The beauty industry.

In collaboration with Carlsberg Lab, we made experiments on how to extract the barley, hops and yeast from the Carlsberg Larger beer, in order to use them in a beauty series. We found out that by freeze-drying the beer into beer powder we could preserve all the beneficial ingredients, making it perfect for beauty product production.

We took the beer powder to the organic beauty product producer Urtegaarden, and together with the company’s product development team, we created the Carlsberg Beer Beauty Series – a range of male grooming products each containing 0.5 liters of beer.

The entire production process was documented through a short-film, which was used as part of a PR-kit containing a press release, pack-shot images and video footage to launch the campaign. The campaign was launched via global PR outreach on the same day as the series became available for purchase on Carlsberg webshop.

The Carlsberg Beer Beauty Series got people all over the world to start talking about the quality and craft of Carlsberg once again. Major newspapers and TV-channels from all over the world picked up the story and millions of social shares made the story spread worldwide.

With a calculated 852 million media impressions, and more than 8.000 tracked media publications (Paper, TV, online) the message travelled the world, covering all of Carlsberg’s markets. For the first time ever, Carlsberg had realized its strategic communication platform “If Carlsberg did…” with an actual product launch. The series sold out within a week, and is now produced in larger scales to be sold in retail stores.

The campaign created an entirely new brand communication platform, enabling Carlsberg to use and communicate about their high quality ingredients in new and surprising ways.