Carlton Draught Skytroop ‘Made from Beer’ Poster

Before 1968 Carlton & United Breweries had a monopoly on beer served across the hotel bar in Victoria. That brand was Carlton Ale. With the entry of Courage Breweries a joint venture between local hoteliers, the British brewer Courage, Barclay & Simonds (it became Courage Ltd in 1970) and the British Tobacco Group put pressure on CUB to rethink their branding. So Carlton Ale was rebranded as Carlton Draught and the beer across the bar was made available as packaged beer.

In 1992 CUB decided that Carlton Draught needed a refresh and they decided to give it some upmarket appeal with a long neck bottle and some silver bling. They kept on revising the brand and decided to go back to the core essence of the brand which was ‘brewery fresh’. This was one poster in a campaign for horse racing.

In 2008 the Sky Troop ad was launched in Australian cinemas before being made available in Vividas format to viewers over the age of 18, through online advertising on internet search engines, social networking sites and Carlton Draught’s website. 3 Mobile users were asked if they would like to be sent the Sky Troop ad. The ad appeared on TV screens that May.

The $9 million TV advertisement opened in the half time break at a sports stadium with the Sky Troop jumping out of a 50-foot schooner (beer glass) of Carlton Draught. Together they form the Carlton Draught logo and spell out the word “Wow”. While the skydivers land without problems the pilot of the schooner loses control, destroying two Jaguars in a car yard, endangering the life of a TV aerial repairman and demolishing the house of a non believer.

This poster was from this campaign.

Since the launch of the Big Ad Campaign (2005), Carlton Draught had defied all the market trends and grown three-fold, a success story driven by the brand positioning of ‘a good honest beer that doesn’t take itself too seriously’, and the ‘Made from Beer’ campaign.