KASTEELBIER / Jef Boes, Director & Photographer

The campaign shares stories of a day in the life of six residents of six different countries. Cinematographic footage captures the countries’ cultural wealth, while also highlighting how Belgian beer culture has slowly gained a spot there. Each film ends with a familiar moment of (self)reflection at the end of the day. During this moment, we see the protagonist deliberately opt for a Belgian Kasteelbier over their own country’s traditional beverage. This moment of true wealth is also captured in a campaign portrait.

Around the world in 13 months

That this project was ambitious had long been established, but various COVID waves and travel restrictions, followed almost immediately by the war in Ukraine, caused the project to be seriously delayed. The campaign shoot, initially planned for one trip of just over a month, ended up taking over a year. Each of the six campaign productions consisted of an average of six days, including travel on and off, a final recce of the locations, at least two days of video shoot and a full day allocated to the photographic image of the campaign.

Stories revolve around emotions, and as everyone will acknowledge in these times of massive content consumption, emotions are not only invoked by beautiful images. Music is also a major component of such experiences. A good composition draws you deeper into the story, provides context and elicits goosebumps. So we  contacted Peter Baert to create these elements. He succeeded in creating a soundtrack that perfectly encompassed the spirit of the country in question on a not-so-lavish budget.

We set out to capture world citizens and their true wealth.

We travelled to Wyoming, France, Israel, Russia and Ireland to capture short portraits of bon vivants, candid and not bothered by what the outside world thinks of them. All with a Kasteelbier in hand. Of course.

One of the stories in the campaign series is that of Ivan and was shot in St. Petersburg (Russia) a few months before Putin’s sudden invasion of the Ukraine. The campaign film will not be silenced out of respect for the local population, who in large numbers expressed their disapproval about the necessity of this war, but will also not be shown in the campaign media out of respect for the Ukrainian people.