The Danish beer brand, Carlsberg, has been established in Vietnam since 1993 but has been struggling to differentiate itself in an already saturated market. This year, it was Carlsberg's 175th anniversary and they wanted to celebrate this globally. However, how do you celebrate a brand that you don't know? Or worse, how do you order a brand that you cannot even pronounce because some letters in the name Carlsberg itself don't even exist in the Vietnamese language?

We turned this into an opportunity to re-introduce the brand and build brand awareness through this cultural insight with an innovative execution.

Instead of teaching 100 million Vietnamese to say a complicated Danish name, we adapted to Vietnam. For the duration of this campaign, Carlsberg rebranded to ‘Carzberg’ (/Car-z-berg/). A local phonetic version of Carlsberg that takes away all the pain points in the name, making it finally pronounceable.

In our campaign, we asked the Vietnamese to give our ‘new’ name a try. After training an AI on the correct pronunciation, we created high-profile billboards that integrated it with a voice-recognition beer tap, that would pour a free Carlsberg after detecting a correct pronunciation. After the on-ground activations, we spread a video that gathered millions of views and extended the invitation to our website where we integrated the AI. Here, people could try it on our website and receive a free Carlsberg voucher. Overall, the idea builds brand awareness and put the product in the mouths of thousands of new customers.

With low awareness numbers across the country, celebrating Carlsberg’s 175th anniversary wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense. There was a campaign needed to re-introduce the brand, especially in the south of Vietnam, with limited resources compared to competitors like Tiger and Heineken. An extra challenge is that Vietnamese have trouble pronouncing Carlsberg, due to the letter combinations not existing in the Vietnamese language. Instead of seeing this as a problem, it became an opportunity to let people interact informally interact with us.

Target: The premium beer drinker & progressive pioneers

- Age: 30 - 40+  from middle to upper-middle class.  

To bring the topic to the people, we launched an audio spot to trigger curiosity in the market regarding Carlsberg and its name pronunciation.

Then, we trained an AI to recognize the correct pronunciation of ‘Carzberg’ and invited people to try to say our name with an innovative outdoor activation. We created voice-activated beer tap billboards that would dispense free Carlsberg upon detecting correct pronunciation. All were located in Ho Chi Minh City.

For the ones that did not get the chance to experience the challenge on-ground, we continued the story by spreading the video of the outdoor installations on social media, inviting everyone to experience the same, but this time at home. The AI was integrated into our website, and would give out a voucher for free Carlsberg upon detecting correct pronunciation.

Additionally, we developed ‘static’ OOH in the city center, inviting people to ‘Just call us Carzberg’

The campaign spread across the country and abroad quickly, gathering over 38 million impressions in 5 different countries. Leading to 130.000 USD earned media. Over 5000 liters of Carlsberg was given away to people who successfully pronounced Carzberg. Putting our brand in the mouths of thousands of new customers, literally and figuratively.

There where 105.000 attempts on our microsite, with 13.000 successful ones. This lead to all 12.000 vouchers running out overnight. Most people who failed the first time, tried again. Proving that our campaign indeed learned to say our name correctly.