Stella's reputation as the beer of choice for sports fans and casual drinking was holding back the brand's growth into more affluent audiences. In order to win market share from craft beers and more expensive brands, they created a new brand product and brand platform. Au Naturel was developed - an unfiltered beer, designed to appeal to fans of organic lifestyle, and slower living than the faster-paced drinking culture of the brand's core audiences. The question was - who were this new untapped audience of target customers?

Finding the right communities was the first step. Codec.ai analysed engagements with organic lifestyle, slow living and community spirit and uncovered the perfect groups of like-minded consumers for Stella to target. The combination of high speed AI across big data sets of content engagements, and the expertise of the Codec strategists pulled the right influencers, creative look and feel, and tone of voice for each community, to feed multiple creative briefs that launched the new unfiltered product in the UK

The cross-section of Codec.ai's content algorithms ensured Stella Artois were briefing their creative with confidence, and putting in the right places online. The launch was the most successful in category in 2022, driving £14m of sales in the first 6 months.