The Campaign

Air-Ink takes what is suffocating the streets, air pollution, and repurposes it to make them beautiful again.  It’s living proof of street-smart creativity, from the beer of the streets, for the streets.  Beyond the technology, Air-Ink is a brand, a range of products, a creative community, and a campaign to celebrate the cultural power and vibrancy of the streets.  As a creative idea, Air-Ink’s impact grows and changes depending on where it lives, and in whose hands.  In the hands of artists, it can create thought-provoking pieces or simply beautify their street environments. In the hands of the rest of our conscientious demographic, it’s used to petition for change. This is not the end of the Air-Ink story. Tiger has handed the rights for the brand over to Graviky Labs, to give it the best chance during the next phases of lobbying on the road to its mass implementation.

Creative Execution

We partnered with the inventor of soot-converting technology, to develop devices that attached to exhausts of ferries, cranes and Tiger delivery trucks. These captured pollution before it reached the air.  The harvested carbon was purified and turned into safe, high-quality ink. Air-ink was then direct mailed, as a boxset of pens and markers, to get street artists and activists to reclaim their streets. With these key influencers using Air-Ink,  Tiger received 200 requests daily from artists around the world wanting to be involved. They created everything from billboard sites to street art as the Air-Ink project spread through social media, blogs and traditional news outlets. Air-ink was used by amateur and professional artists across the world on huge billboards in city centres and taking over galleries for live drawing events. Air-Ink was then used to sign petitions sent to city Mayors to get the project implemented on public transport.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Of the top ten biggest global beers, Tiger is now the fastest growing premium beer in the world.  Air-Ink is the brands most hard-working and broad-reaching campaign to date, accelerating the brand’s expansion into new markets and reinvigorating brand perceptions in Asia.  In terms of reach, we generated over 2.75 Billion impressions (worth over 4.6M$ US) and over 36 million video views with this campaign.  In terms of environmental impact, we have produced 770l of Air-Ink, that’s equivalent to 20,000 hours of CO2 emissions captured before reaching the air.  We filled 26,000 pens used to create over 1000 artworks.  These artworks will be showcased in Tiger Beer bars as global gallery installation in 2018.   

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Air-Ink, is an innovative new type of ink made from air pollution.  It generates its own earned media every time it’s used.  Air-Ink also impacts people differently depending on how it is used.  In the hands of street-artists, advertising becomes artworks.  In bars, coasters became government petitions.   Delivery trucks were a media to promote Air-Ink and way to produce it.  In Hong Kong, New York, London, Singapore, Chicago, Amsterdam, Sydney and Berlin, each iteration of the campaign revealed original uses of Air-Ink and interest grew.  Creativity from the streets, for the streets, from the beer of the streets, Tiger Beer.   

In order to reach our audience and strengthen Tiger’s street credentials we needed to grow their fame amongst the influential, but hard to reach, street-creativity scene.  We did this by making something both useful and inspiring.  The Air-Ink brand name, positioning, product range and distribution strategy were specifically designed to engage street-artists.  They were then invited to experiment with Air-Ink to participate in core activations and events.  Locations and artists were carefully selected for their shared values with Tiger Beer as well as their influence within their creative community.  These people served as key opinion leaders and ambassadors for the campaign.  In line with this “streets-up” approach, influencer and consumer voices came together in bars to petition local governments to take Air-Ink to the next level.