(Theo James & David Beckham / Courtesy Stella Artois)

Stella Artois has long positioned itself as the beer for people who appreciate a little ceremony with their drinking.

So partnering with a television series populated by impeccably dressed British aristocrats, gangsters and schemers seems almost too perfect.

On August 26, Stella Artois and Netflix announced “The Gentlemen’s Serve,” a global marketing campaign tied to the September 3 return of Guy Ritchie’s hit Netflix series The Gentlemen. The promotion pairs series star Theo James with longtime Stella Artois ambassador David Beckham and turns the Belgian lager’s famously elaborate pouring ritual into something considerably more sinister.

The partnership is also a significant one behind the scenes.

It is the first brand partnership specifically built around The Gentlemen and the first major multi-market campaign to emerge from the broader global partnership between Netflix and Stella Artois parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev. The campaign will run in the US, UK, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea.

And if you’ve watched The Gentlemen, you can probably understand why Stella Artois wanted in.

Created by British filmmaker Guy Ritchie and inspired by his 2019 movie of the same name, The Gentlemen debuted on Netflix in March 2024. The series stars Theo James as Eddie Horniman, an English aristocrat who unexpectedly inherits the title of Duke of Halstead, along with his family’s sprawling country estate.

Unfortunately, the inheritance comes with one considerable complication.

Buried beneath the property is an enormous illegal cannabis operation controlled by the formidable Glass crime family. Eddie initially wants nothing to do with the business, but his attempts to extricate his family from Britain’s criminal underworld instead pull him deeper into it.

Working alongside Susie Glass, played by Kaya Scodelario, Eddie gradually discovers that he may be considerably better suited to the gangster business than he originally imagined.

The result is vintage Guy Ritchie, mixing British aristocracy, organized crime, dark humor, expensive clothes, country estates and some very questionable people behaving badly.

(Courtesy Anheuser-Busch / Stella Artois)

Season Two picks up a year after Eddie and Susie joined forces in Bobby Glass’s criminal empire. This time they’re thinking bigger, expanding their operation beyond the English countryside and into Italy while Bobby’s increasingly erratic decisions threaten everything they’ve built.

Clearly Netflix is confident that viewers haven’t tired of Eddie Horniman’s increasingly complicated criminal career. The streaming service has already renewed The Gentlemen for a third season, even before Season Two arrives.

And Stella Artois is counting on that.

“The Gentlemen’s Serve” was developed by GUT Amsterdam with Netflix Brand Studio around Stella Artois’ longstanding five-step pouring ritual. But instead of treating the perfect Stella pour as simple bartender training, the campaign recasts it as a very Gentlemen-style exercise in power and precision.

The centerpiece is a 90-second spot called The Auction, which brings James, in character as Eddie Horniman, together with Beckham.

Five shorter films called The Clean-Up, The Sacrifice, The Angle, The Cut and The Judgement play off the individual steps involved in properly serving a Stella Artois.

And it’s a savvy piece of brand placement.

Stella Artois has spent years building its image around European sophistication, its signature chalice and the idea that serving the beer correctly is part of the experience. The Gentlemen revolves around its own elaborate rituals of class, status and power.

Put those two worlds together and suddenly trimming the foam from a lager starts looking vaguely threatening.

And the promotion goes well beyond television and social media.

From September 3 through September 5, Stella Artois and Netflix are taking over The Marlborough pub in London and transforming it into a Gentlemen-inspired experience complete with hidden messages, Stella Artois pours and limited-edition merchandise. Some visitors will also have the opportunity to leave with personally engraved Stella Artois chalices.

Stella’s Netflix tie-in is but the latest example of how aggressively major beer brands are looking beyond traditional advertising and attaching themselves to entertainment, sports and pop culture.

And Stella Artois has been particularly comfortable playing in that space.

The beer’s ongoing relationship with Beckham already gives it one of the world’s most recognizable ambassadors. Adding Theo James and one of Netflix’s most stylish crime series gives Stella another way to sell something beyond what’s in the glass.

In this case, it’s selling the ritual.

And in the world of The Gentlemen, you definitely don’t want to screw up that pour.

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