Birra Messina

La Sicilia si sente

A video strategy to make Birra Messina the flag of Sicily.

When Birra Messina became part of the Group, Heineken decided to strengthen the personality and the positioning of Birra Messina by leveraging the strong connection between the brand and its homeland. We wanted to do something more than just telling it with the typical advertising language, because Birra Messina is more than that. It has Sicily inside. And Sicily, the real Sicily, cannot be described, it can only be felt.

For this reason, for the relaunch of the Cristalli di Sale recipe, we chose to put Sicily at the center of the whole campaign, and to leave the stage to Sicilians. Based on this concept, a huge video project was built: a journey across the whole island to discover the stories of Sicilian people capable of reinterpreting ancient traditions, just like Cristalli di Sale reinterprets the classic recipe.

30 days of shooting, which gave life to 9 three-minute documentaries where 14 Sicilians, selected with a street casting, proudly accept to tell the story of the personal unbreakable bond they have with the wonders of their land, in an unscripted live recording.

The fisherwomen Giusy and Antonella Donato; the founders of "Periferica" Carlo Roccafiorita and Paola Galuffo; the nature photographer Giuseppe Distefano; the jewels designer Roberto Intorre; Francesco Blancato and Francesco Cusumano from the magazine “Suq. Unconventional Sicily”; the singer-songwriter Mario Incudine; the chef Lorenzo Ruta; Davide Comunale and Irene Marraffa, promoters of the Via Francigene of Sicily; the creators and pioneers of the Farm Cultural Park, Andrea Bartoli and Florinda Saieva.

The documentaries are the beating heart of a large communication platform, designed to raise awareness on the brand values and bring them to a wide audience through Social Media (with video teasers, documentary previews, longform hero videos, galleries and video pills), YouTube (with a pre-roll campaign and a channel created to host all the longform hero videos), a multi-subject print campaign and a landing page on Birra Messina website, as home and hub for the entire project.

La Sicilia si vive

A digital platform to experience the authentic taste of Sicily.

After the success of the 2021 campaign, “La Sicilia si sente”, in 2022 Birra Messina set a challenging goal: to strengthen the bond with Sicilian people by evolving the storytelling about the brand’s Sicilian roots into real experiences, and then use them to engage people from all over the world, bringing Sicily out of Sicily.

In order to show the soul of Sicily in the most authentic way, we selected fifteen Birra Messina lovers and took them on a tour with 3 Sicilian artists who bring back to life the traditional craftmanship of the island: Damiano Rotella, who carries on the tradition of the famous Sicilian carts, working with designs and colors that bring back to life the art of the older generations. Melinda Alaimo and Salvo Scherma, two masters capable of designing, modeling and painting ceramics that transmit all the emotion of the Sicilian amazing history. Bianca Celano, a chef from Catania who turns the culinary uniqueness of her region into an unforgettable experience.

The Birra Messina lovers, together with these artists, had the opportunity to make with their own hands a real Sicilian cart, to actually create a collection of glasses and to cook a typical recipe from Catania, Sarde alla Beccafico. Together, they experienced firsthand the core values of the brand: passion, richness and generosity.The result is an online platform made of six different short films that together create a unique Sicilian story: a story about how the authentic values that Birra Messina inherited from its land are real and alive. A meaningful step forward for the brand, which evolved from a purely narrative phase, La Sicilia si Sente, to a new experiential phase, La Sicilia si Vive.