Celebrating 150 years of St Pancras International

Did you know one of the key reasons St Pancras Station was built was to bring beer from Burton-on-Trent to London? We paid tribute to this part of history in an Oktoberfest-themed beer pop-up. Cheers!

St Pancras International is built on beer. Who knew? Our client, HS1, wanted to celebrate its beer heritage and asked us to help deliver an installation to promote the iconic station and the two pubs in St Pancras, The Barrel Vault and The Betjeman Arms.

We responded with an Oktoberfest-themed activation. Our dates lined up neatly with the Bavarian celebration and allowed us to leverage its ‘beer festival’ imagery. We created a gigantic barrel to act as a focus point of the stand and ran beer-sampling sessions between 4-7pm every day for the experience’s three-week duration. We organised build and installation, designed the stand and the historical timeline of St Pancras’s beer history. Our installation was in a high footfall area of the station so we needed a sturdy build in order to withstand the inevitable wear and tear from people rushing past.

Rather than working with Brand Ambassadors the pubs in St Pancras Station each took turns running the Beer Festival, choosing which of their beers they wanted to let visitors sample. It created a direct link between the new pubs and our activation and helped our activation feel like its part of something more established.

Throughout the activation we worked alongside English Heritage to ensure our beer festival met its standards as well as featuring accurate and interesting information about St. Pancras Station’s hoppy history.

All that’s left is to raise a glass.