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Kronenbourg Sells French Savoir-Vivre to Swedish Beer Drinkers
Kronenbourg's 2018 Swedish film campaign, titled "How To: Taste the French Way of Life" and produced by WDW Creative, positions the Alsatian lager brand not as a beer product but as a portal to French cultural rituals, instructing Swedish audiences in the art of slow meals, stylish exercise, and deliberate quality through a single tutorial-format film asset.
The campaign launched in Sweden in September 2018, entering a market where imported and premium lager brands compete intensely for lifestyle positioning rather than price. Kronenbourg, owned by Carlsberg Group according to campaignlive.co.uk, carries a heritage rooted in Strasbourg, France, and the 2018 Swedish execution draws directly on that French identity as its primary creative lever. Rather than leading with alcohol content, flavour notes, or occasion-based messaging, WDW Creative structured the film as a tongue-in-cheek instructional guide, a how-to for adopting French habits that culminates in the choice of Kronenbourg as the natural expression of that sensibility.
In Sweden, where northern European pragmatism sits in cultural contrast to French notions of leisure, the campaign's tutorial conceit carries inherent comic tension. The film depicts a series of lifestyle rituals — extended lunches away from the desk, the deliberate rejection of takeaway food, exercise performed with a certain elegance — presenting each as a learnable behaviour accessible to any Swedish consumer willing to embrace the French way. Kronenbourg becomes the final and most pleasurable lesson in the sequence. The campaign contains one media asset, as documented by Clapboard, and operates entirely within the film medium, concentrating its creative argument into a single, self-contained viewing experience designed for the Swedish market.
Kronenbourg pursues lifestyle positioning rather than product-led communication in its 2018 Swedish campaign. This strategic choice reflects a broader competitive reality in the Swedish alcoholic drinks category, where brands including Heineken and Carlsberg's own portfolio already occupy functional and occasion-based territory, making cultural differentiation a more defensible space for a French-heritage import like Kronenbourg.
The strategic lineage of the "Taste the French Way of Life" platform predates the 2018 Swedish execution. According to Marketing Interactive, BBH Asia Pacific introduced the platform for Kronenbourg 1664 across Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in April 2014, deploying it across television, print, digital, point of sale, out-of-home, and brand collateral. WDW Creative's 2018 Swedish reinterpretation distils that regional integrated platform into a single film, adapting the French lifestyle concept for a Scandinavian audience for whom the cultural contrast between Nordic efficiency and French indulgence is both legible and appealing.
The consumer insight underpinning the campaign is precise. Swedish drinking culture increasingly gravitates toward premiumisation and considered consumption, and positioning Kronenbourg as the beer of people who choose quality and leisure over convenience aligns with that attitudinal shift. In the Swedish market, where Systembolaget's retail monopoly shapes category dynamics and encourages deliberate purchase decisions, a brand narrative built around intentionality and taste carries particular resonance. By casting French customs as aspirational but achievable behaviours, WDW Creative gives Kronenbourg a distinct identity that neither domestic Swedish lagers nor mainstream international competitors directly contest.
Robin Günther directs the film, bringing a specific tonal calibration to a concept that could easily tip into parody or earnestness. The tutorial format chosen by WDW Creative requires precise comic timing: each lifestyle instruction must read as both absurd and genuinely appealing, convincing the viewer that the French way of life is worth imitating without making the beer brand feel like a punchline. Günther's direction holds that balance across a sequence of vignettes, each staged to communicate a distinct French ritual before the film arrives at Kronenbourg as the culminating lesson.
The creative team behind the campaign, as documented by Clapboard, includes Creative Director Jon Bergsman and Copywriter Marcus Bellafesta, whose script structures the film's instructional logic. The copywriting carries the voice of the campaign — authoritative yet playful, as though a French lifestyle coach has been given access to a production budget — and Bellafesta's language choices give the tutorial its distinctive register. Design across the campaign is credited to Linnea Lundqvist, whose visual language supports the French aesthetic cues that ground the brand's identity claims. Viktor Gårdsäter serves as photographer, with Ville Olin producing and Petter Selvehed acting as Executive Producer, rounding out a Swedish production infrastructure assembled around a distinctly Gallic creative concept.
The decision to concentrate the entire campaign into one film asset rather than a multi-format suite is itself a creative statement. It demands that the single execution carry the full weight of the brand argument, and it disciplines the storytelling to deliver a complete narrative arc within the constraints of a single viewing. The result is a campaign that functions as a short film as much as an advertisement, with the tutorial format providing structure and the French lifestyle content providing texture and cultural aspiration for the Swedish audience.
No verified performance data for "How To: Taste the French Way of Life" is publicly available. No verified awards recognition for the campaign has been identified across major award schemes including Cannes Lions or the Effie Awards, as documented by Clapboard. The Clapboard Score for the campaign stands at 61 out of 100, placing it in competent but unremarkable territory relative to standout work in the alcoholic drinks category.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates coherent strategic thinking. The decision to extend an established global platform — one first developed for Asian markets in 2014, according to marketing-interactive.com — into a new geographic market with a locally produced film shows disciplined brand management. Carlsberg Group, as the parent company of Kronenbourg per campaignlive.co.uk, operates with the scale to maintain consistent brand positioning across markets while adapting execution to local cultural contexts, and the Swedish film reflects that approach.
Where the campaign faces structural limitations is in its reliance on a single film asset operating in a media environment that increasingly rewards multi-touchpoint presence. In Sweden in 2018, digital video, social distribution, and out-of-home were all available channels that a richer campaign architecture might have activated. Concentrating the creative argument into one film produces coherence but limits reach and frequency. The tutorial format is inherently repeatable — each lifestyle instruction could sustain a standalone execution — and the decision not to extend the concept across additional assets may have constrained the campaign's ability to build cumulative brand equity in the Swedish market.
Kronenbourg's "How To: Taste the French Way of Life" is a 2018 Swedish film campaign created by WDW Creative. It positions the brand through a tutorial-format film presenting French lifestyle rituals — extended meals, deliberate leisure, stylish exercise — culminating in Kronenbourg as the natural expression of that refined sensibility for Swedish audiences.
WDW Creative produced the campaign. The agency assembled a Swedish creative team including Creative Director Jon Bergsman, Copywriter Marcus Bellafesta, and Designer Linnea Lundqvist, with Robin Günther directing the film and Viktor Gårdsäter serving as photographer, as documented by Clapboard.
Carlsberg Group owns Kronenbourg, according to campaignlive.co.uk. That ownership gives the brand access to group-level distribution and marketing infrastructure, enabling a consistent French-heritage positioning platform to be adapted across multiple geographic markets, including the 2018 Swedish execution by WDW Creative.
The platform originated in Asia. According to marketing-interactive.com, BBH Asia Pacific launched the "Taste the French Way of Life" campaign for Kronenbourg 1664 across Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in April 2014. WDW Creative's 2018 Swedish film reinterprets that established platform for a Scandinavian audience.
The campaign receives a Clapboard Score of 61 out of 100, as recorded by Clapboard. That score reflects competent strategic execution and coherent brand positioning, while indicating the campaign falls short of the creative distinctiveness that characterises top-performing work in the alcoholic drinks category.
The tutorial format creates comic tension between Swedish pragmatism and French indulgence, making each lifestyle instruction both absurd and aspirational. It provides a clear narrative structure for a single-asset campaign, allowing Kronenbourg to present French cultural rituals as learnable behaviours with the beer as the final and most pleasurable lesson.
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