Stella Artois is the first brand to buy into Netflix’s The Gentlemen, and the first to sign a multi-market deal between Netflix and AB InBev. The partnership is called The Gentlemen’s Serve and was announced on 26 August, a week before season two landed on 3 September.
The creative is by GUT Amsterdam with Netflix’s in-house brand studio. The hero film, “The Auction”, puts Theo James back in character as Eddie Horniman opposite David Beckham, a Stella ambassador. Rather than outbid his rival, Horniman sends him a beer. Five shorter films then dramatise Stella’s five-step pour as a set of power moves, retitled The Clean-Up, The Sacrifice, The Angle, The Cut and The Judgement.
It runs in eight markets: the US, UK, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea. Alongside the films there is social, influencer and experiential work plus limited-edition engraved chalices, and branding agency JKR built a takeover of The Marlborough in London from 3 to 5 September. LBB has the full credits.
The Gentlemen has a fan base that loves the world Guy Ritchie built.
Magno Herran, VP of global brand and marketing partnerships at Netflix, in the Netflix newsroom
Strategically this is Stella selling ritual and precision, which is where the brand has always been strongest. The Reassuringly Expensive era spent a quarter of a century making a virtue of the price rather than the liquid. The Gentlemen’s Serve does the same job with a chalice instead of a price tag, and does it inside the show rather than in the break around it.
Why it matters: Netflix has been steadily converting its biggest titles into brand-partnership real estate, and the world’s largest brewer signing a multi-market deal rather than a one-country test suggests alcohol marketers now treat streaming integration as a mainline channel, not a stunt. Marketing Week reported the deal on the trade side.
He plans, buys and reviews advertising for a living, and helps score campaigns on the site against the same five Crown Score criteria alongside other authors and contributors.
81/100Lowe turned a duty-driven price premium into a 25-year proposition and the most awarded advertising in the world in 2002. Then the drinkers it recruited renamed the beer.
Opening the Festival of Marketing, Hegarty set out a simple triangle for judging creative work, blamed KPIs for a sea of sameness, and admitted he once had no idea if a famous Audi ad would work.
The IPA Bellwether Report finds a net 14.3 per cent of marketers raised budgets in Q3 2026, with main media at a nine-year high, though the 2027 adspend forecast was cut.