It goes without saying that the beer business is a highly competitive one. Brands tirelessly work to show that their beer tops others in the market by adding new flavours to their brew, making alterations to their bottles and sometimes even adding tech to awe consumers.

But Canadian brand Brewhouse Light Beer, owned by the Great Western Brewing Company, is going against the notion of a hard sell, protesting against brands that use marketing smoke and mirrors in a new online video campaign.

Launching this week and running for another 24, the “Head-to-head challenge” campaign will include a slew of videos released on the brand’s Facebook page and YouTube channel with creative that plays on the idea of a taste test. In the videos, Brewhouse Light Beer attempts to show that, at the end of the day, what’s important is the taste, not which beer is colder or smoother, says David Walker, partner at Vancouver-based Saint Bernadine, the agency that handled the campaign creative and media.

“Is that a reasonable claim that a competitive beer can make? Can one be smoother? And if so, how do you decide that?” he asks, further explaining that each video sets out to prove that claims made by other beer brands can also be met by Brewhouse Light Beer through demonstrations of comparison tests.

“I think there is a lot of marketing speak and people are seeing it so much that they’re becoming a little numb to it,” he adds. “So by pulling back the curtain on all this hype, we want beer drinkers to taste and decide for themselves.”

Because the campaign revolves around a theme of what Walker describes as “anti-hype” and is against the one-way dialogue some brands have with consumers, the media buy only includes digital ads on sites with content that’s shareable (such as comedy sites and those that house consumer-generated videos), and there will also be a push on social networking sites, such as Twitter and Instagram. There will also be Facebook ads and YouTube pre-roll ads, with the agency tracking views of each video to decide which one is seeing the most traction, and then promote accordingly.

“This is an honest approach, we truly want to remove the hype,” he says, noting that the brand is positioned as being a “Refreshingly Honest Beer” and is venturing out from purchasing print and radio as it has done in the past. “The campaign resonates a lot more when it’s shared by a friend versus being broadcast by a company.”

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