Taking the iconic-in-New-Zealand but globally tiny Steinlager Pure brand to the world was not going to be easy — especially with a budget that would barely get us one month on a Times Square billboard. We went back to the product truth and came up with a plan that would resonate with urban dwellers the world over.

That plan: When you buy a Steinlager Pure, you get a piece of pure New Zealand. There’s a great video of the result, here.

It took a while, but we worked with our client (the wonderful Ben Wheeler) to reserve 120 hectares of native New Zealand forest and wetland, in the name of Steinlager Pure drinkers in our launch markets. The deal: Buy one Steinlager Pure, enter your code, and you get a unique piece of this iconic part of New Zealand reserved in your name. Buy another, and you add a chance to visit your piece of land for real – courtesy of Steinlager.

Steinlager Pure was a niche brand launching into behemoth beer markets like the US, Canada and the UK, so we had to make sure the idea would cut through. Posters showed actual shots of the land, divided into unique portions. Coasters were cut from those poster images, each containing an innovative snap-to-open code. Buy the beer, get the coaster (already a unique piece), then enter your code via SMS, mobile site or on the App to get an instant reward right at the point of purchase.

Imagine a piece of the purest land in the world secured in your name – and the chance to see it for real.

Of course we added easy ways to spread the word through social networks, and ultimately we’re starting to build a database in each market for regular dialogue. But making the exchange feel very real for participants was key, and a standout element is the iPhone App with its goosebump-inducing motion-controlled panoramas – along with an Augmented Reality compass-based Pure finder that even shows you where and how far away your piece of purity is.

A quick-step journey through sites best suited to a life lived to the full

Not your ordinary website for not your ordinary beer: when Steinlager Edge debuted as the mid-strength beer for those living life to the full, we knew we had to pull something out of the bag to not only help explain the product benefit, but to cut through — with an idea that actually added value to the web experience, rather than interrupting it.

Visit the site

The result: a seamless, swift, iFrame-based choose-your-own-adventure journey through some of the best local content – selected purely for those to whom living a full life is not about doing less, but about doing it all.

Your journey begins at one of many clear-cut web ads (with up to three times average click-through) inviting you to decide what’s next. We set up multiple journeys based on themes like Work vs Play, and Home vs Away, and lead you through sites that prove the web is not just for email and news, but inspiration and opportunity. Each site was carefully selected to help provide ideas for getting ahead, getting away, or getting inspired — and each step was also closely tied with an occasion to drink.

Every page featured an iFrame journey selector, acting as a stepping-stone to the next

Using iFrames allowed us to control the journey, while providing full, uninterrupted access to the entire content of each site that agreed to join us in promoting Steinlager Edge – right down to ensuring Flash movies would still run under our overlay (thanks CactusLab!)

Standing our ground with words writ large

All the ingredients in Steinlager Pure are sourced from the purest place on earth – New Zealand. New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance is one of the reasons we can make this claim. With the permission of the estate of the late Prime Minister of New Zealand, David Lange, we brought to life the words from the 1985 Oxford Union debate – where David Lange made his case against pro-nuclear forces. At that time he drew a line in the sand that is now seen as one of the defining moments for New Zealand.

As a precursor to the launch of a new campaign for Steinlager Pure, words from that debate were written in the sand on New Zealand’s shore. The link at the conclusion of the film takes the viewer to a preview of the commercial, a fuller version of the debate and further information about Steinlager Pure.