Modern Day Expertise and 200 Years of Heritage Combine for Greene King's Craft Beers

House337 is launching a new campaign for Greene King’s first ever craft beers, Level Head and Flint Eye. The beers celebrate Britain’s eccentric past but are designed for the modern day, as is the campaign.

The 30 second TV and VOD campaign titled 'Brand New Beers, Centuries In The Making' takes Greene King’s 200 years of brewing heritage, the historical myths and legends of Bury St Edmunds and the freshly reimagined recipes of the beers and combines them all into a contemporary visual homage which spills out of the can itself. 

The film introduces us to ‘craft beer, but not as you know it, because these beers are made from history.’ Illustrations inspired by woodcut engravings common to the medieval era were mapped out using hundreds of lines of code, then laser-cut out of 355 aluminium cans. They were then animated using sophisticated stop frame animation to bring the stories to life. A light was placed inside the cans to project the cut-out illustrations showing both the techniques and ingredients that go into making the beers and the stories that inspired them, featuring flint-tipped arrows and St Edmund’s beheading. The film ends with the message: ‘We may have been doing this for over 200 years but the truth is, we’re only just getting started’. 

Alex Radcliffe, marketing controller at Greene King Brewery, says, “We know craft beer drinkers value the level of craftsmanship that goes into producing a superior tasting product. To launch this new range of craft beers it was therefore imperative we had a creative treatment to match this, and in turn reflect the level of expertise that has been passed down through generations of our brewers. This advert was a very ambitious project, we’re delighted with the final film and look forward to drinkers learning more about the fantastic local legends that inspired our brewers to make these beers”.

Steve Hawthorne, creative director at House 337, says, “Like the beers themselves, this campaign has been a long time in the making, but it is worth the wait. The technical complexities behind it are truly mind-boggling, which precisely reflects the way in which we’ve created something that does justice to the craft, know-how and expertise Greene King has put into its new range of beers.”

The work has been created by Pete Ioulianou and Ollie Agius and directed by Balazs Simon through BlinkInk.

Balazs Simon, director at Blink Ink, says, “This is probably the craziest thing I’ve ever done in camera. We essentially created a 360° projector out of the beer can, which seemed a straightforward idea on paper, but proved to be quite the head-scratcher when executed. From calculating the anamorphosis of hand-drawn illustrations to programming motion control and building custom rotating light rigs in a blacked-out studio, this project was a big balancing act, an actual fight with the laws of the universe.”

Breaking the week of 18th October, the film will run for two months in the UK through to December and will be supported by out-of-home.