It’s not always easy to promote a product to an audience that is different than your usual one, and this creates the need for innovative ideas. That’s what Astra did, in order to promote their beer to women of all ages!

Astra, along with Philipp und Keuntje, decided to target women on their new campaign, in order to approach an audience that was usually overlooked by beer brands. Men are traditionally the ones that drink more beer, which results in relevant advertising. However, Astra thought of reaching a brand new target group, hoping to make more women try out their beer. In fact, they thought of creating a campaign that leaves out the male audience, targeting women exclusively! How can you promote your product to a specific genre though? That’s how they decided to create a girl detection billboard, an innovative way of marketing to an exclusive audience.

An illuminating billboard managed to grab the attention of women passing it by, engaging with them through relevant videos. What’s impressive is the ability to use the latest technology in order to customise the video for each occasion, creating more than 70 videos. There were even videos addressing men that stopped to observe the billboard, informing them that this ad is not for them!

The creative idea required the installation of a built-in camera on the illuminating billboard, along with the latest gender detection software, in order to detect the gender from people’s faces. What’s more, the software is even able to detect the age of a person, in order to ensure that they do not promote the beer consumption in under-aged women.

This was the first gender-specific advertising, both for a beer ad, but also for an ad in general, proving that there are always new ways to reach an audience that you haven’t targeted before. Even if you use billboard advertising for your latest campaigns, there is still a way to blend traditional marketing with digital re-invention, in order to reach your set goals.

According to Astra, their idea led to a significant amount of publicity, with many media sources reporting on this clever marketing campaign, being impressed both by the originality, but also by the technology used to implement the campaign.

And what’s even more important for Astra, is the fact that women seemed to like their beer, which means that they managed to increase their audience!

Credits

Advertising Agency: Philipp und Keuntje, Hamburg, Germany
Executive Creative Director: Robert Müller
Art Directors: Bastian Adam, Rouven Steiman
Copywriter: Christian Stamp
Technical Director: Holger Norden
Interactive Producer: Miriam Koch
Project Managers: Julia Cornils, Michael Mehring
Film Production: sonntagskind
Published: January 2015