Reassuringly Expensive

Why it works

Most brands hide a premium price; Stella Artois made it the selling point. In 1982 Frank Lowe's young agency, Lowe Howard-Spink, gave the strong lager two words that turned its biggest drawback into proof of quality: "Reassuringly expensive." The phrase started life buried in the body copy of a Stella press ad by copywriter Geoff Seymour; Lowe fished it out and made it the end line. That print origin came nearly a decade before the cinematic TV films, which began only in 1991, and the line survived until InBev put it "into hibernation" in 2007. It is studied as a textbook case of reframing a weakness as a benefit, and for its staying power: by 1995 Stella was Britain's bestselling take-home beer. The press strand kept its edge, too. In 2000 a Stella print campaign from Lowe, by then Lowe Lintas, won the Press & Poster Grand Prix at Cannes, a result jury president Marcello Serpa said was never in question.