• PR
• Creative
Beavertown Brewery likes to go big at Halloween, and 2023 was no different. Its campaign titled “Please Be Terrified Responsibly” would see the Brewery launch its first-ever graphic novel accompanied by an animated short film iteration, Flightmare - a story with a focus on the mystery of The Bermuda Triangle.
Beavertown gave us the challenge of generating awareness around the launch of the campaign, through a coverage-driving picture story stunt. The stunt needed to speak back to the Flightmare story, be brand focused and create a splash across national and online media.
We looked deep into the theories around the Bermuda Triangle, and found that we had our very own version in the UK called the Dyfed Triangle. Located in Broad Haven in Wales, the Dyfed Triangle was so called because it is one of the UK’s UFO hotspots, and in 1977, Broad Haven played host to one of the UK’s most famous UFO sightings ever, when 14 school children saw a UFO land in the field beside their school.
At the time the campaign was launching, Broad Haven was also the subject of a Netflix documentary on close encounters, meaning it would very much be on the cultural agenda - and this got us thinking, what if aliens landed on Broad Haven this year?
Which they did. Working with a sand artist and US government scientist, we created an imagined alien landing on Broad Haven beach in the form of a Sand Cipher. Huge circular markings in the sand, with a 6m Beavertown skull in the centre and a hidden Mayan code created by our scientist, Jo Meville, which if cracked, allowed the public to be in with the chance to win some seriously awesome prizes courtesy of the Brewery.
But, we needed the story to feel spooky and aliens weren’t necessarily something associated with Halloween. So to bolster the story we commissioned consumer research that showed Brits feared aliens more than they did ghosts, which tied the story firmly to Halloween and gave us insights that would allow the story to travel across the news pages as well as the picture desks.
The campaign picked up almost 50 pieces of coverage in national and regional news titles, consumer lifestyle, and trade publications — all including the visual of the Beavertown Sand Cipher.
Notable coverage includes The Times, Evening Standard, The Sun, and so many more.
