Celebrating your birthday during lockdown due to COVID-19, that sucks. That means no party, no friends and no drink in real life to properly celebrate your birthday with the ones you love…
That’s why Belgium’s biggest beer brand, Jupiler, and BBDO Belgium came to the rescue: inviting all Belgians celebrating their birthday during the lockdown to postpone it!

How? On www.jupilerbirthday.be, Belgians born in March and April entered their real birthday date and proved it with their ID card.
Then, they chose a new birthday date, after the lockdown.
As a gift, participants received 10 free pints of Jupiler to drink in their favourite bar, once the lockdown was over! So they could go celebrate with all their friends, making up for all the lost hugs and cheers. And they support the bar owners by doing so, as Jupiler pays them back all offered beers.

Simple. An easy way to give some hope to all the unfortunate people who were celebrating their birthday during lockdown. And a little glimpse at our post-COVID social life.The activation was launched on March 31, 2020.

The results?
After 24h, it hit an organic reach like Jupiler had never seen before in Belgium:
413.000 people reached (previous best post = 273.000 in a week)
6300 comments (previous best post = 1400)

In total, Jupiler convinced 95.312 Belgians to postpone their birthday. That’s 13% of Belgian adults born in March & April. Among which more than 40.000 in less than 48 hours. Main national media talked about the activation, generating €458.597 of earned media. All this with zero media budget.
With 11.317 likes, shares and comments, and 99% of positive sentiment, it’s clear that Belgians were waiting for a positive brand communication in these unprecedented times.

Oh, and we almost forgot... AB Inbev liked the idea so much that they decided to run it as well in other markets: in South Africa (for Castle), Colombia (for Poker) and Canada (for Palm Bay).
Cheers to that!