Bud Hotel - Budweiser South Africa Launch
In 2017, we were tasked with launching the King of Beers to South Africans with a spectacular event. The King James Group Johannesburg was responsible for the entire event and launch concept. The event was free and so were the drinks, but partygoers had to register beforehand to stand a chance of winning access for themselves and their friends.
Bud Hotel is a concept that has been used in the USA previously and we saw it as a great platform to introduce the brand's premium nature to South Africans. We put a spin on the idea by creating an event with unique areas for partygoers to visit all centred around a spectacular stage with 9 cubes that various artists could perform from. In the centre the "King" had the ability to mix and manipulate the output from all the other performers to create a truly unique audio experience. The visuals we spectacular too, with projection mapping allowing us to virtually open different parts of the cube to reveal artists and display brand cues and themes with a a full VJ and lighting rig.
jOIN THE FEARLESS | Blood Hotel - hALLOWEEN eVENT PROMOTION
Our task was to help promote a Budweiser Halloween party. Halloween is seen as an Americanism to most South Africans and we needed to help create relevance for our target audience. Halloween has a scary and spooky theme and we chose to use this as a platform to talk about bravery and being fearless. Being brave and fearless means forging your own path and identity, so we found 3 artists doing just that and asked them to help us create a Halloween anthem to promote Budweiser's event. Sho Majozi, Lady Zamar and Sjava are South African artists with diverse styles who have made names for themselves by not conforming to the safe stereotypes the music industry favours.
The artists didn't know that they would also be at the mercy of our pranksters, Ganja Beatz, who helped us orchestrate a big scare for the artists in studio. This gave us an opportunity to have a conversation about what it means to be fearless in forging your own path.
We wanted to create a new aesthetic for Halloween in South Africa, something not based on the tired American tropes that have no relevance here, so we worked with practical effects make up artists and a director to create alter egos for our artists and shoot videos that helped promote the event on social, digital and out of home channels.
The single "Night and Day" Was produced by Ganja Beatz, multi award winning South African producers who happen to have a studio within the King James Group Building in Johannesburg. It was picked up by radio stations in South Africa and became a hit across the continent.