Wednesday’s ad is for Stella Artois, from the early 2000s. From the late 1800s until the 1980s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. I’ve been posting vintage European posters all last year and will continue to do so in 2020. This poster was created for Brouwerij Artois, which began brewing their popular Stella Artois in 1926. A brewery existed on the same site in Leuven, Belgium, since at least 1366, and in 1708, Sebastiaen Artois became the brewmaster for what was then known as the Den Hoorn brewery. Nine years later, in 1717, he bought the brewery and renamed it the Artois brewery. In 1988, they were a founding member of InterBrew, which went on to gobble up other breweries and today is known as Anheuser-Busch InBev. I don’t know who created this poster, but it’s interesting to contrast this to yesterday’s ad, where the pour was important to Stella Artois’ messaging for quite some time. While newer than most of what I’ve been highlighting, it’s a fascinating strategy to rebrand the beer as high class and worthy of such a ritual, which appears to be the goal of most of their advertising. I remember attending a bartender’s competition to do this pour at an event in San Francisco a couple of decades ago, and I think they’re still at it.
