Newcastle Beer vs Stella Artois

Just recently I touched the topic of brand wars and here you go -> Newcastle Beer picks on Stella Artois!

There is the campaign, the anti-campaign and something in between. While the first is intended to promote a brand, the second is created with the same intention, but is based on pointing out competitor brand’s flaws through explicitly mentioning the brand’s trademark entities such as the name, slogan, etc. Let’s just say the latter is forbidden in advertising business and can lead to serious trouble. That’s why most companies that decide to take the road of mocking their competitors usually pick the “in between” option –  taking something that is highly characteristic of the competitor brand, but isn’t registered to legally belong to them.

Now, we have Newcastle, a British based Brown Ale brewery, taking a little different approach. Droga5, the agency that was appointed by Newcastle, decided to pick on Stella Artois by exploiting the word “Chalice” used on Stella’s most recent print ads that have “It’s a chalice, not a glass” written on them. The Newcastle billboard just says “Who uses the word ‘Chalice’?”, and is placed under the Stella Artois billboard. At the bottom of the pint ad “No bollocks” phrase is written to point out that beer commercials are usually created to convey nonsense messages.

Could this be a start of an advertising war between the two brands?