Stella Artois dominates New York Festivals Innovative Advertising Awards wining eight gold world medals for stellaartois.com

LEUVEN, Belgium – 21st April 2008 – Stella Artois, the Gold Standard European lager which traces its roots back to 1366, today celebrated achieving new levels of excellence by winning eight Gold World Medals, including Best Consumer Targeted Website, for its ground-breaking and immersive www.stellaartois.com at the New York Festivals Innovative Advertising Awards. No other campaign or brand has ever been awarded with eight Gold World Medals in one year at this celebrated awards ceremony. This prestigious organisation recognises the world’s best work in advertising and programming.

Neil Gannon, global brand manager for Stella Artois, commented:  “We are delighted to be recognised by such a high-profile group for the site we have developed and are so proud of.  This only adds to the success and feedback that we’ve seen from the online community.  We would like to thank the industry for recognising Stella Artois’ vision and innovation – we think our work is one of the first steps in the future of immersive websites.”

Three aspects of the site were acclaimed in this year’s New York Festivals awards.  La Bouteille, a short film created especially for the site that provides revolutionary navigation around the www.stellaartois.com and will never be seen in traditional advertising slots;  Le Courage, which provides a series of challenges online to inform and entertain visitors to the way in which Stella Artois might have been made in the past; and Le Passage, an interactive narrative regarding the development of the brewery in Leuven, Belgium through history, as told by its founder.

The full list of Gold World Medals won by www.stellaartois.com are as follows:

La Bouteille - Best Consumer-Targeted Website - Gold World Medal
Le Courage - Beverages: Alcoholic - Gold World Medal
Le Courage - Best Consumer-Targeted Website - Gold World Medal
Le Courage - Best Integrated Campaign - Gold World Medal
Le Passage - Beverages: Alcoholic - Gold World Medal
Le Passage - Corporate Information - Gold World Medal
Le Passage - Best Design - Gold World Medal
Le Passage - Best Integrated Campaign - Gold World Medal

A multi-national team from Lowe Worldwide’s agencies in Stockholm, London and South Africa created and oversaw production of the website, which launched in September 2007 to online critical acclaim. Since its launch the site has experienced a ten-fold increase in visitors over the previous site, with each visit average of close to six minutes, well above the industry standard of 45 seconds.