For Beck’s, beer always goes hand in hand with art—this year, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s brand is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its Art Labels project by launching a plethora of themed activities (the recent Beck’s Art Crawl exhibit if one of them) revolving around creativity. In collaboration with Mother London, the brand has started an ambitious three-year initiative dubbed The Green Box Project, celebrating art, independent talents and technology at the same time. Beck’s is offering artists from various creative fields (not only visual) a unique opportunity to get their pieces showcased in the groundbreaking virtual gallery for people to ‘unlock’ them via augmented-reality in “the visually stunning and technically pioneering” Green Boxes designed by Jason Bruges—they will be located across more than 80 countries in major cities of the world including London, Miami, Milan, New York and Rome to name but a few.
As part of the project, Beck’s will select 1,000 works submitted by creative individuals, fund and put them on display via 6.5 feet glowing cubes. The most surprising thing here is that no art pieces are visible to the naked eye there—to see them, you should use a special mobile application that allows to locate the nearest Green Box, start the augmented-reality experience, learn more about the ways to participate, etc. (so far, the apps available only for iPhones and iPads, but soon Android users will also be able to marvel the art and watch the related content).
From July through September, the brand will distribute “30 Green Boxes holding exclusive virtual pieces by renowned artists in the US, UK and Italy,” the official website states. “You have, so to speak, a pair of glasses that allows you to experience what is inside of the Beck’s green box. Every box is filled with a piece of art, fashion, music or design or a combination of those, because we’re talking about those four passion points of our target consumer,» commented Peter van Overstraeten, global marketing manager for Beck’s , to AdAge. For the launch of the project, on July 4 Beck’s unveiled the first work by Belgian-born artist Arne Quinze—he created a giant 200-feet virtual intense orange-red flame coming out of the torch of the Statue of Liberty (the initial piece didn’t require the box to view it—people can see it via the green box as well as the Statue of Liberty through their smartphones). So far, the dedicated website features the names of 18 artists and creative teams, which contributed to The Green Box Project (their projects will be soon unveiled), which much more to arrive over the coming months.
Photo: www.arnequinze.tv
According to AdAge, Beck’s has also introduced a new tagline, ‘Just Part of the Story,’ which is to emphasize the fact that the brand has many projects (both already launched and coming), but all of them are not standalone initiatives and are embedded into the canvas of Beck’s life.