In the middle of the chaos of São Paulo, the busiest city in Brazil, 135 metres up in the air, athletes walk along a 125-metre highline. Suddenly the athletes bend down and begin to unfold something – a huge banner unrolls. It bears the Cerveza Patagonia logo with its stylised mountain peaks and the message: If at first you see a line graph, then it’s time for mountain views. Then they climb into hammocks suspended from the highline. The highline athletes also wore t-shirts with thought-provoking messages to get people to reflect on the way they live their lives in big cities like Sao Paulo, the 4th biggest city in the world. Besides the main message on the t-shirt and the banner suspended from the highline, there were two other key messages – Do you see how important balance is? and The skyline is not the limit.
The Mountain Intervention is quite a PR stunt. It was created by Beta Collective for Anheuser-Bush’s Cerveza Patagonia, the Argentinian Beer brand strongly connected to the mountains, and asked people to consider which peaks brought them peace – career or mountain – and to think about their wellbeing.
The PR stunt brought together important names from the highline world, including world-record holders. The athletes who took part in the performance were Allison Ferreira de Oliveira, Andreza Pereira Monteiro, Gustavo Souza Féo de Oliveira, Joel Soares da Silva, Jurandy Ferreira de Melo Junior, Matheus Stoco Vidal, Monique Paredes, Paloma Cristine Galvão Cardoso and Vinicius Cauhy. It took place in early November, getting traction in Brazil’s main media outlets, including Brazil’s biggest TV Network (Globo), which resulted in a 4-minute segment on the Sunday Sports Program Esporte Espetacular dedicated entirely to the activation – earning media seen by more than 124 million people.
The campaign film was directed by sibling directors, Fábio and Marília of I.M. (Irmãos Meirelles or The Meirelles Siblings) in their second work for the beer.
“Developing projects for Patagonia is a lot of fun; we get to create challenging ideas and then get them off the ground, literally, as well as cool brand activations. Also, we get to drink decent beer and have fun inventing punny headlines. With work like that you don’t even need to go to the mountains to relax says Bernardo Tavares, Beta Collective’s founder and creative director.
Fábio and Marília (Irmãos Meirelles) added, “We’re always challenged in new ways, with work that takes us to unexpected places like the top of a mountain or the top of the tallest skyscrapers. The freedom to think creatively about the films we do for Cerveza Patagonia makes overcoming these challenges very rewarding”.
The stunt follows an initiative in September in which Beta Collective carried out an experiment with Cerveza Patagonia to see if the mountains could reduce anxiety and stress levels.
Beta Collective: Cerveza Patagonia soothes Brazilians’ souls
Credits:
Client: ZX Ventures (Cerveza Patagonia)
Creative: Beta Collective
Creative Director: Bernardo Tavares
Art Director: Leandro Bechara
Copywriter: Bernardo Tavares
Head of Marketing: Daniel Silber
Marketing Manager: Eduardo Fernandes
Producer: Samantha de Freitas Vieira
Film Directors: Irmãos Meirelles (The Meirelles Siblings)
Production Director: Marcelo Colaiacovo
Producer: Clara Rodrigues
Production Assistants: Carolina Sousa de Araújo Ferreira & Daniel Bezerra Campos
Photography Director: Rod Cauhi
1st Camera Assistant: Alexandre Serafini
Camera Operator (2nd unit): Willian Barban Galbiati
Location Producer: Eduardo Bitar
Drones: Alberto Kalin Youssef Matulaitis (Betinho), Felipe de Oliveira Moreno, Ricardo Cachone Zanzarini, Laurent Ceglia, Daniel Hafez
Logger: Renan Aristoteles Fernandes
Editor: Daniel Crepaldi
Audio Company: Estúdio Casa da Árvore
Soundtrack, Mix & Sound Design Pedro Penna & Pedro Turcão
Voiceover: Charles King
Highline:
Athletes: Allison Ferreira de Oliveira, Andreza Pereira Monteiro, Gustavo Souza Féo de Oliveira, Joel Soares da Silva, Jurandy Ferreira de Melo Junior, Matheus Stoco Vidal, Monique Paredes, Paloma Cristine Galvão Cardoso, Vinicius Cauhy
Director: Murilo Vargas @ Vasconcelos Cançado
Camera: Eduardo Barbetta
Photographer: Gustavo Oliveira
Producer: Ana Paula Brucker
Drones: Beto Albertin, Luiz Ricardo @ Oliveira Freitas
