Peroni X Sempre

Marking its 175th anniversary, the iconic Italian beer brand Peroni changed its infamous logo. It was the brand’s first logo change in over 15 years and the first in the age of social media; consumers freely and publicly show their dissent through comments, posts, and stories. 

The restyling was necessary, but insidious for a market leader in the beer category. Beer is big business in Italy and Peroni has an extremely strong reputation in the country. Sensitivity was key, as Peroni has been a constant presence in the life of Italians who associate significant personal and collective memories with the brand. The goal of the campaign was to make Peroni Lovers an active part of this historic change, and thus the first ambassadors of the new course.

Rebranding can be critical for a brand’s success and its public perception; we understood that it can also act as the perfect moment to capitalise on community engagement.

For many Italians, Peroni is not just a beer, but a love for the ages. With this in mind, we asked ourselves: how can we avoid breaking our community’s hearts when Peroni tells them “We need to talk, I am about to rebrand myself”?

Before launching the new logo and bottle, we decided to put brand lovers at the core of the project, making them ambassadors of the rebranding campaign and ensuring a warm welcome for the evolved Peroni.

We tested the community of Peroni-lovers on what true love means, analysing the extent of their passion for the brand across different social touchpoints, including the gamechanger for relationships: Tinder.

Peroni-lovers are the most loyal of the Italian beer market in terms of purchase, particularly in the 25-65 y.o. male demographic. For them, Peroni is not just a beer, it is a true passion. Peroni is forever. To increase the chances of success of the community engagement activity, we expanded the main demographic to include a younger and more digitalised audience – 18-24 y.o. men. This meant we could intercept more easily on Tinder, rather than sticking with traditional social channels such as Facebook and Instagram.

Tinder also suited perfectly according to data, which suggested that in the previous months 67% of Tinder users chose to consume more Beer than any other alcoholic. These insights made us choose to partner with the market-leading social dating app to create a Branded Profile Card format which imitates the profile of a user (genderless and therefore matchable from everyone) to engage and stimulate interaction.

On 14th February 14th, Valentine’s Day, we launched Peroni’s Facebook and Instagram channels and on Tinder, the official hashtag #PeroniXsempre, together with a short film asking Peroni Lovers to share an expression of their love for the brand on a dedicated landing page.    

In February and March, we received hundreds of expressions and we published 175 of them (one for each year of Peroni) on the dedicated Instagram page: @peroniforever. This page became our digital ‘Milvio bridge’, turning our users into the normal influencers of the campaign.  

The following month we involved the two fans who had shared the most indelible message of love: a tattoo of Peroni on themselves. The two ‘tattooed lovers’ were invited to one of the oldest Peroni Breweries in Rome to unveil the new label of the bottle in real time. To prove their unwavering and unchanged love for Peroni, we challenged them to receive a tattoo of the new logo as well.