Stella Artois Let´s Do Dinner

Legacy brand Stella Artois sought out MATTE to craft a befitting experience, as the culmination of their year-long “Let’s Do Dinner” campaign. The campaign was centered around Stella’s aspiration to “pour life back into dinner”: rectifying the zeitgeist of eating quickly and eating alone. Originally, Stella Launched the campaign as a “Let’s Do Dinner” Contest, where fans could enter a sweepstakes to be part of the eventual dinner.

The Let’s Do Dinner campaign was all about connection, bringing people together over dinner. Our creative took inspiration from a central question: If you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be? We took that question and strove to create the World’s Most Fascinating Dinner Party, replete with moments designed to enhance connection, spark conversation, and turn moments into memories. The event also needed to hero the official partner, Matt Damon’s charity water.org.

The campaign centered around four A-List celebrities, whose disparate careers and personalities lent the occasion a spirit: Matt Damon, Zoe Saldaña, Jeremy Allen White and Ludacris. Each talent brought their own flare to the table, and the question was, how to maximize their respective contributions. We utilized the Core Four, as they were called, from unboxing videos of our custom invitation boxes featuring Frankies 457 product, to unique performances that dazzled the crowd. Beyond Zoe, Matt, Ludacris and Jeremy, we hosted Ryan Tedder, Martha Stewart, Sully Sullenberger, Tika Stumper and Ghetto Gastro.

The event was split into two moments: the reception and the dinner. The reception held downstairs, was meant to invoke a modern chic soirée, with projection-mapped animations, passed hors d'oeuvres, a live performance from DJ Amy Pham, and a VIP photo moment with legendary Mark Seliger.

After the reception, guests were treated to a four-course meal inspired by the varied experience of dining in New York and paired with a Stella varietal, featuring a salad sourced from the Union Square farmers market, an elevated Reuben, and an apple dessert fittingly named The Big Apple. All throughout dinner we sparked conversation among guests with performances, including a food magician who played a trick on Matt Damon and Ludacris, a panel discussion with Jeremy Allen White, Zoe Saldaña and Martha Stewart, a live performance reminiscent of “Hot Ones” featuring Ludacris and Sean Evans and a live performance by Adele, Rihanna and Sam Smith’s favorite ghost writer, Ryan Tedder.

Production brought our creative vision to life, with a custom Stella draft bar, providing guests with perfect pours of 3 varieties of draft beer. We also conceived and built brand moments, like the water.org chalice wall, bringing water.org into the space and allowing guests to make donations on-site. Our custom projections for the space brought the theme of “New York in a Night” to life. The tablescape was the bedrock of the event, as the whole point was to gather guests to connect over dinner. Our tablescape embraced high/low and sparked conversation for all guests, with a mix of circular, rectangular, small and big tables, organized to maximize guest flow and contact.

MATTE was responsible for immortalizing the magic of the event with content capture. Our veteran content team creative directed and shot a film from Ludacris’ POV, shadowing him leading up to and during the event as well as general event photography.