Kornuit's 'Made of Moments' campaign, created by Fitzroy in 2018, repositioned the Dutch beer brand around lived experience over status. Read the full analysis.
ARCHIVEKornuit Made of Moments Reframes Dutch Beer Advertising
Kornuit's "Made of Moments" is a 2018 Dutch alcoholic drinks campaign, created by Amsterdam agency Fitzroy, that positions shared lived experiences as more valuable than possessions, money, or status — using a single film to anchor the brand's identity among young adults in The Netherlands.
Published in May 2018, the campaign arrived five years after Kornuit's original launch by Grolsch in September 2013, as reported by Marketingfacts Nl. That founding positioning introduced the brand as a "new generation pils" brewed by Grolsch's youngest brewers for energetic, confident twenty-somethings who valued freedom and friendship. By 2018, Kornuit — marketed under the Grolsch and Asahi umbrella — needed to deepen that identity rather than simply restate it, and Fitzroy's answer was a narrative-first film built around moments rather than product.
The campaign's geographic market is The Netherlands, where Kornuit competes within a mature and fiercely branded domestic beer landscape. Christian Camps, Brand Manager at Kornuit and Grolsch, stated publicly via marketingfacts.nl that "Made of Moments" was created collaboratively with the target audience across strategy, creative, and execution — an unusually participatory production process for the alcoholic drinks category. Camps identified target audience preferences for alcohol-free options, sustainability, and convenience as key insights shaping the campaign's direction. The film itself, however, leads with emotional resonance: the core argument is that a life well lived is measured in moments shared with others, not in accumulated wealth or social status. That proposition is not specific to beer, which is precisely the point — Kornuit reaches for cultural relevance before category relevance. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100.
Fitzroy built the "Made of Moments" strategy on a direct consumer tension. In The Netherlands in 2018, young adults aged eighteen to thirty were navigating a cultural moment in which experience-economy values — spending on travel, events, and shared occasions — were displacing aspirational materialism. Kornuit's agency chose to make that shift explicit rather than metaphorical, positioning the brand as a companion to life's accumulation of small, meaningful experiences.
The strategic rationale was also competitive. Kornuit was carved out of Grolsch, one of the most established Dutch beer brands, and needed to establish a personality distinct from its parent. Max de Jong, a commentator cited by Adformatie Nl, noted that the new Kornuit campaign helped the brand distance itself from Grolsch — an observation that underlines how much of the strategic work in "Made of Moments" is about differentiation within a family portfolio, not just against external rivals. In the Dutch alcoholic drinks market, Kornuit faces pressure from both heritage lager brands and the fast-growing craft segment. According to researchandmarkets.com, the global craft beer subcategory carried strong projected growth through the mid-2020s, and domestic Dutch drinkers were among the European consumers driving premiumisation trends. Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world's largest brewer by volume, and Heineken, which commands significant share across the Netherlands and broader European markets, represent the dominant competitive forces that any mid-tier Dutch beer brand must navigate according to data reported by beveragemarketing.com.
Camps' confirmation that target audience members co-created the campaign's strategy and execution reflects a broader industry move toward participatory brand-building — one that Fitzroy translated into a narrative framework rather than a product-feature platform. That choice carries strategic risk in a category where clear brand-product linkage typically drives recall, a tension that subsequent measurement would expose.
"Made of Moments" is a film-led campaign, and its creative identity rests on the specific craft decisions made at production level. The campaign was directed by Bear Damen and produced by CZAR, the Amsterdam-based production company with a long record in Dutch and international advertising, as documented by clapboard.com. Music was composed by Tom Trago, whose track "Working Machines" provides the emotional spine of the film — an unconventional choice that signals Kornuit's ambition to align with a culturally literate, musically aware audience rather than defaulting to generic aspirational soundtrack conventions.
Tom Trago is a Dutch electronic music producer and DJ with an established presence in Amsterdam's club and arts culture. His involvement is not incidental. Choosing a recognisable figure from within the target audience's own cultural world rather than licensing broadly familiar music is a deliberate creative signal — one that rewards the in-group viewer while still functioning emotionally for those unfamiliar with his work. Bear Damen's direction translates Fitzroy's narrative brief into a visual register that prioritises human texture over product spectacle. The film follows the experience-over-possession thesis through observational moments rather than staged tableaux, giving the piece a candid quality consistent with the co-creation philosophy Camps described in marketingfacts.nl.
The single-film format — one media asset serving the full campaign — concentrates creative and production resource into a singular statement rather than spreading across a fragmented execution suite. In the Dutch alcoholic drinks context of 2018, that approach aligned with a broader Fitzroy creative philosophy of depth over volume. The result is a piece of work that operates at the intersection of narrative film and brand communication, which accounts both for its cultural ambition and for the measurement friction that followed its release.
ARCHIVENo awards recognition for "Made of Moments" is documented across Cannes Lions, the Effies, One Show, D&AD, Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC. The campaign's documented performance record comes instead from a MeMo² evaluation reported by adformatie.nl in July 2018. That evaluation produced mixed findings: fifty-four percent of respondents found the campaign noticeable, thirty-nine percent found it likable, thirty-eight percent found it distinctive, twenty-six percent perceived a clear message, and twenty-six percent felt it fit the Kornuit brand — producing an overall score of 5.4 out of 10, according to adformatie.nl.
Fitzroy disputed these results directly, stating that its own research showed the intended audience — men and women aged eighteen to thirty in The Netherlands — recognised, appreciated, and considered the commercial distinctive, as reported by adformatie.nl. Max de Jong, commenting for adformatie.nl, observed that the campaign's new creative approach required a period of consumer adjustment, suggesting the gap between Fitzroy's internal findings and the MeMo² panel may reflect sample composition as much as genuine creative failure.
Structurally, the campaign's core vulnerability is the low brand-fit score. At twenty-six percent, fewer than one in three respondents connected the emotional narrative back to Kornuit specifically — a predictable risk when a brand leads with a universal human proposition rather than category cues. The film's cultural ambition, realised through Bear Damen's direction, Tom Trago's "Working Machines" soundtrack, and CZAR's production, built a distinctive aesthetic that registered with its intended audience but did not fully close the loop to the brand. That gap between creative distinctiveness and brand attribution is the central analytical finding this campaign presents.
"Made of Moments" is a 2018 Dutch beer campaign created by Fitzroy for Kornuit. Published in May 2018 in The Netherlands, it uses a single narrative film to argue that shared experiences outweigh possessions or status. The campaign was directed by Bear Damen and produced by CZAR, with music by Tom Trago.
Bear Damen directed the "Made of Moments" film for Kornuit. Production was handled by Amsterdam company CZAR. Music was composed by Dutch electronic artist Tom Trago, whose track "Working Machines" serves as the film's emotional foundation and reflects the target audience's cultural world.
A MeMo² evaluation reported by adformatie.nl gave the campaign an overall score of 5.4 out of 10. Fifty-four percent found it noticeable and thirty-eight percent found it distinctive, but only twenty-six percent felt it communicated a clear message or fit the Kornuit brand. Fitzroy disputed these findings based on its own research.
Christian Camps, Brand Manager at Kornuit and Grolsch, stated via marketingfacts.nl that the campaign was built collaboratively with its target audience across strategy, creative, and execution. Audience preferences around alcohol-free beer, sustainability, and convenience were identified as central insights informing the campaign's direction and positioning.
The campaign helped Kornuit distance itself from parent brand Grolsch, according to MeMo² commentator Max de Jong as cited by adformatie.nl. In a Dutch market where Heineken and Anheuser-Busch InBev dominate, the experience-led narrative gave Kornuit a culturally distinct platform separate from both its parent and category giants.
Clapboard assigns "Made of Moments" a score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's creative ambition and production craft — realised through Bear Damen's direction and Tom Trago's music — balanced against measurable gaps in brand attribution identified in the MeMo² evaluation reported by adformatie.nl.
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