KONA BIG WAVE

LIQUID
ALOHA

Equating the feeling of drinking a Big Wave beer with the rush of catching a wave
 

Kona Big Wave, an Anheuser-Busch darling from Hawaii, has its eyes set on playing with the big dogs in the lifestyle import beer space as it continues to grow on the mainland. It’s Hawaii in a bottle, capturing real, raw, lived-in Hawaii and not touristy beaches like its competitor Corona.

The clients told us that this was a brand equity campaign, so we paid homage to the product name itself by telling the emotional story of the wave. Within the build, peak, and finish of the wave, you can find the whole of life, love, and aloha. 

    

Hawaii is home to Big Waves for drinking (responsibly) and big waves for surfing. Is it coincidence that most videos on #drunktiktok are about the ocean? You tell me.

We extended our wave analogy to stills, where our hand models got absolutely drenched in beer for two 12-hour days in a row. And I wrote some fun headlines without bathing in beer first.




  
Did we actually build a beach bar on set? Yes. Did the crew start tearing it down before the clients got a picture of themselves sitting there? Yes... oops.

 
A lot of late nights went into this campaign. On one of them, my art director accidentally generated an AI cat in Photoshop.

Made at Duncan Channon.