We would win back Tuborg’s position as the most culturally relevant beer brand by creating a new platform that would enable discovery and collaboration in music, for fans and artists: Tuborg Open.

Using social and digital insights we identified a global partner who embodied this spirit of discovery: Major Lazer, themselves a product of cultural exchange.

Hailing from Florida, Trinidad and Jamaica, their genre-agnostic sound merges Western and World Music, and they’ve collaborated with everyone from Ed Sheeran to Pabllo Vittar.

Major Lazer brewed us a beat that was used as the fuel for new music all over the world. This music came from our collaborators; 12 A-list local artists from Tuborg’s markets including Scriptonite and Chris Lee.

These musicians worked with us to make new tracks for people to discover, inspired by their own cultures and backgrounds, but always with the same beat at the heart. The Tuborg Beat.

Collaboration tracks audibly stemmed from The Tuborg Beat, but created by international artists with different backgrounds, sounded unique. For aesthetic consistency, tracks launched with lyric videos produced by Major Lazer’s creative team.

#1 global youth media company, Vice, were chosen to tell the collaboration stories showcasing Tuborg as the facilitator; launched with an ad featuring Major Lazer in a “Beat Brewery” and documentaries were created with talent from India, Russia and China. Several countries followed suit, creating additional documentaries. Culturally influential audiences were targeted through an editorial series on unique music scenes in Tuborg markets.

The campaign was augmented by local media partners and social influencers who unboxed “Beat Bottles”- beers that played the Tuborg Beat when opened.

The campaign culminated in TBRGOpenFest; a festival in Moscow streamed on Vkontakte. Tuborg brought Major Lazer to Russia for the first time to perform collaborations live with the Indian and Russian artists.

The result has been both culturally and commercially rewarding, repositioning Tuborg as a brand with real relevance and improving sales in participating markets.

Eight tracks charted, with our release in Russia reaching #2 on Apple Music and China’s track achieving a Top 3 position on the 6 biggest streaming platforms.

We achieved over 100 million views of our content and 60 million views of the music videos within the first 4 months, with a 26% higher completion rate than average across channels and 93% positive sentiment, including some truly amazing comments on the music:

“30 seconds make my ears pregnant” Male, China

Most importantly, the business objectives were exceeded. Serbia saw over 20% volume growth, Italy +6%, Belarus +32%, China’s ecommerce sales doubled, and Russia’s volume decline stabilised for the first time in three years.

All of this making Tuborg Open one of the most successful campaigns for Carlsberg Group.