“A Taste Worth More”: How A Beautifully-Shot Film Had Global Tennis Fans Craving a Sip of Stella Artois

When the timing is right, nothing in the world is more satisfying than a crisp and cold beer. A gentle pour, with the sun refracted through the golden amber hues of the liquid, underpinned by the soft fizz as the bubbles rise to the surface of the beverage and disperse. It’s a sensory experience that Stella Artois was determined to provide - and partnered with 2024’s top tennis tournaments to do so. 

At grand-slam tournaments including Wimbledon and Roland-Garros - as well as premium locations across the globe - fans were treated to glimpses of Stella Artois framed in a way that makes a sip of the amber nectar irresistible. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that cake-factory’s Martin Wonnacott was leading the team behind the lens, applying his instinctive grasp of product photography to help further elevate Stella’s “A Taste Worth More” platform. 

To find out more about how the lip-smacking campaign came together, LBB’s Adam Bennett sat down with Martin alongside JKR’s ECD Sean Thomas, and Stella Artois’ global VP Tim Ovadia… 

LBB> Guys, what was your initial vision heading into these ads - and how closely does it align with the final films? 

Sean> We live in a fast world. Punchy ads, short dwell time, rushed conversations. And it really felt to me that the right thing for the brand to do - to show its quality, craft, and the genuine worth of taking your time - was to slow everything down. We really wanted to be the antidote to most other content that tries to interrupt your feed, by giving you a few seconds of calm and sensory overload. 

So we knew if we were shooting at incredibly slow speeds and using a hyper real ASMR soundtrack, we had to use the very best in the business. Martin got the brief straight away, and came to the table with several great builds; his initial treatment for the concept instantly nailed what we were going for. Our team worked directly with Martin to find the tiny, macro details that make the brand unique; the paper tear strip on the bottle, the star on the Chalice stem, etc. 

The footage we captured went above and beyond what I'd ever hoped for. We managed to find so many great moments within every shot, and the combinations we have created since have given us such a rich playbook. The footage feels equally at home in a one minute film, a 10-second Instagram story, a looping video at a dinner party, taking over plazas in Canada, front and centre in Piccadilly Circus, played on a digital screen at a train station... months later we're using it in ways beyond what your usual story-driven ad would allow. 

Tim> The mission was to make the beer - and our band - an object of desire and I think that’s exactly what Martin and the team achieved. As a marketing community we do love to over-complicate things and sometimes we forget the basics… basics like ‘make people want to go and order a Stella Artois’! So you tell me - did it make you crave a beer?  

LBB> It certainly did. So how did you know that Martin was the right person to put them together? 

Tim> Stella Artois is a brand of both substance and style, so craft is important to us. I have a lot of respect for the work Coca-Cola does in the area of evoking thirst appeal - hence, I asked Sean who the best in the world was when it came to product photography and he said there’s only one name – Martin Wonnacott. 

He said the bad news is that he’s British, but the good news is that his studio is around the corner from us in Midtown. The rest is history. I was concerned that any self-respecting photographer would base themselves in midtown, but I suppose there’s always an exception to the rule.

LBB> Martin, to what extent did you already have a clear picture in your mind’s eye of how this project was going to look before you started? Are you already assembling the pattern of water droplets in your head before the cameras roll?!  

Martin> Funny you should ask - the answer is ‘almost, yes’. 

I had a very strong view in my mind of how I wanted this all to look and feel from the moment I got the brief. The idea was to elevate the visual experience for Stella Artois without compromise, and for me the best way to do that was to lean heavily into the craft by exacting the most indulgent and pure footage possible. Simple elegant camera moves that serve the purpose of focusing the attention on the product itself were key. 

To make these films stand out, I wanted to make the 15-second spots from no more than three shots and in some cases just one shot. On top of that, the goal was to couple this with elegant and authentic SFX and have the payoff of an unexpected style of music.

LBB> Given that it’s such a process of trial and error to get the perfect shot, how do you know when you’ve done it? What are some tell-tale signs that you’ve nailed the footage you know you’re going to use?  

Martin> We knew the winning shots as we shot them straight away. Depending on the shot, it was a combination of timing and allowing the liquid to do what it does best. 

My favourite shot is the camera moving inside the glass chalice as bubbles rise, and the foam majestically washes across as the camera leaves the liquid. That was a lot of trial and error which, unfortunately, resulted in me getting covered in beer quite often. It was definitely the hardest shot to pull off but it was worth every second of frustration.

LBB> Why is it so important that everything we see in the ad is real beer? 

Sean> It was so important. Everything here is in-camera. No post. No retouching. No exaggeration. 

It was important because we wanted to show that when you receive a perfectly served Stella Artois, it genuinely is a wonderful thing. A taste worth more, if you will. We wanted to capture the important parts of our perfect serve ritual, from the quality of the head and the skim through to details like the cleanliness of the glass and the cold draught tower. 

It's important that people understand what a great beer this can be when served the right way; to encourage consumers to make sure they demand more and for bartenders to do better. 

Martin> Everything about these films is built on the notion of craft and purity, so using Stella Artois straight from the can or bottle was absolutely imperative. The final footage only had colour grading and nothing else, so everything is as real as can be throughout. 

LBB> And Tim, why did you want to align this campaign with 2024’s big-name tennis tournaments? 

Tim> Our serving ritual is what sets us apart from other beers and underpins our quality credentials and Belgian heritage. There’s obviously a parallel with the serve in tennis, and hence we wanted to utilise Martin’s photography as part of our broadcast integration with events like the French Open and Wimbledon.

LBB> What’s the biggest challenge you encountered on this project, and how did you overcome it? 

Sean> We planned this shoot very well. But when you are shooting extreme close ups, in slow motion, suddenly you see things happening that on paper sounded great but in reality don't quite work. 

We had a few instances of that here. Details like the incredible quality of the camera lens almost making the painted Cartouche logo look fake, so we had to find a different angle to what we'd planned for. Or trying to accurately get a nice drop of liquid to run down a label in the right place. 

The best example of that was a shot we had hoped to get of the Stella Artois logo shot from inside the Chalice glass as it filled with liquid. In our heads it would be a killer shot, but it just didn't work. We tried a few things and played around with it for ages. This was five or six days into the shoot, under incredibly hot lights, as everyone was due to soon be on planes and trains home. But Martin kept playing around and eventually captured the logo, shot from inside the glass, as we removed the camera through the foam. We reversed the image playback and the shot was magic; the very last thing we shot was my highlight of everything we captured. 

Thankfully Martin is a more patient man than I, and doesn't settle for anything less than perfect. 

Martin> Yeah - I think the biggest challenge we had was figuring out the pairings of shots after the shoot. We had so much great footage, it made it hard to narrow down to just a couple of shots for a 15 second spot.

LBB> Finally, is there anything you’d do differently looking back on the project now? 

Sean> Honestly, not at all. And I very rarely say that. I'm so proud of this work. The planning. The collaboration. The end product. How much it's being used. How versatile it is. How well our team thought through every single combination of footage, based on where it shows up. 

It's the gift that keeps giving. 

Martin> I absolutely love every shot from this shoot - so I think the answer has to be no. I’m very happy with everything, and hope the people who see it will be too.