Unlimited edition
The brand experience behind Hertog Jan’s rise to #1 in beer
AB InBev, Hertog Jan Grand Prestige Vatgerijpt
Visual identity / Packaging / Brand Activation
#4 to #1 beer
growth in the Netherlands, strongly influenced by this brand activation
Grand Prestige is considered the ‘Crown Jewel’ of Hertog Jan’s beers. This complex Belgian-style Quadruppel tastes even richer after ageing in the bottle, a feature that led former Master Brewer Gerard van den Broek to encourage brewery visitors to buy ‘one for now, and one to lay down’.
Hearing about the huge success of ‘Bourbon County’ stout, an iconic, barrel-aged beer from sister brewery Goose Island, he lost no time visiting Chicago to learn about the process.
Soon acquiring his own casks, Gerard experimented with barrel-ageing his beloved Grand Prestige, and in 2017 ‘Vatgerijpt’ was born. Our job was to create branding and packaging that might, one day, make it an icon too.
‘One day’ arrived earlier than we thought!
Encouraged by the response to the launch, the following year saw a major step-up in the customer experience, orchestrated by our partners at The Valley.
The stories of the distillers and the brewers, of barrel-ageing as a process, and the tasting of the beer over its maturation were filmed and shared online.
The launch day became an event at the brewery, with strictly limited quantities also available at a few craft beer stores.
Each year the barrels, the stories and the activations change, firing the imagination of brewers, beer lovers and commentators.
After initially selling out in weeks, it became days, then hours, then minutes. In 2020, all 33,000 bottles available were reserved within 30 minutes, crashing the website. Since then a ballot system has been used to manage demand.
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As an annual limited edition, Vatgerijpt is clearly a big success in its own right, but what’s unprecedented is the scale of its ‘halo effect’ on the Hertog Jan brand as a whole. The storytelling and ritual around Vatgerijpt’s annual release has seen the mainstream Pilsener, with barely any advertising of its own, achieve consistent double-digit growth, propelling Hertog Jan from a regional #4 brand to The Netherlands’ best-selling beer.