New Zealand beer brand Steinlager did not let a simple thing such as a massive multinational beer giant stand in it's way when it came to maximising it's impact during the Rugby World Cup recently held in New Zealand.

The tournament has been sponsored by Heineken, with a previous All Black sponsor Steinlager, left out in the cold, unable to use any of the tournament hype to promote itself.
The company responsible for running the Rugby World Cup has had in place some very stringent terms regarding the use of branding, imagery or even the words "Rugby World Cup" during the tournament and lead up. This effectively cuts out anyone other than "official" sponsors from cashing in on the tournament and using it as a brand leverage.

This has caused a lot of headaches for a lot of people, with the world cup organisers coming down like a ton of bricks on those that flaunted their impressive trademark and copyright positions.
Even those blogging about the World Cup have had cease and desist emails.

The clever clogs that currently have the Steinlager advertising account used some very suggestive imagery to capture the vibe of a rugby world cup event without ever stating that what they were portraying was actually the rugby world cup. In essence they managed to do exactly what the legal teams were trying to prevent - non aligned brands using the massive event to leverage their brand.

The commercial they have been running in the lead up, and during the tournament has received alot of media attention as this approach threw the conventional middle finger up at those responsible for maintaining the trademarks and intellectual copyright surrounding the world cup tournament.
The creative team behind the Steinlager campaign must have severely lawyered up as they embarked on this direction, and given the exposure the campaign has had, one would say that it must have been worthwhile for them.

Heineken on the other hand didn't offer up any specific Rugby World Cup advertising that had any impact. We watched a lot of the games and none here can remember seeing a Heineken ad being shown, just naming rights on the intro/exit screens.

The Steinlager ad is very clever and ticks so many boxes for us - we think it will go down as one of those ads that has long term cultural impact - it effectively captures a moment and mood so relevant to a whole segment of the market it is targeting.

The ad has some obvious social media implications as well, with a lot of buzz out there in the immediate post game - will the "old fella" drink the 24 year old Steinie? What will it taste like?

So with no further ado, here is the follow up ad - they believed that the New Zealand side would win, so did the clever thing and recorded the inevitable winners "we believed" commercial to play to really cash in on the warm fuzzies, and follow on partying that is sure to happen.

Sweet. Bet that a 24 year old tinnie of Steinie tasted not so flash.
Made the mistake of drinking a 10 year old stubbie of Rheineck last christmas due to a dare - in retrospect no amount of anything would make me do that again in a hurry!