Vancouver’s Red Truck Beer is looking to generate some noise with its fully functional boombox beer case.

As part of its promotion for its Truck Stop Concert Series, which ran in July and will return this weekend, Red Truck partnered with creative shop Will, as well as Vancouver commercial printer Met to create the LTO.

The boombox is built with a phone slot that leads to a central compartment fashioned out of stacked cardboard with a bugle-shaped cutout that amplifies sound from the phone’s speaker.

The boombox also displays a QR code linking to bands showcased at the concert series.

Fans were invited to enter a contest to win the case and also two tickets to the Truck Stop Concert Series through social media advertising and OLV.

“Contesting has always been a big summer priority, however we have seen trends move away from traditional in-store contesting… like gifts with purchases, to contesting that is more easily marketed over social and digital,” says Laura Gerber (Hamacher), Red Truck’s VP of sales and marketing. “We have seen a great output of user-generated content, increased engagement on social, and achieved more impressions through digital contesting.”

Gerber tells strategy that music is a big part of its brand identity: Red Truck features live music every Friday and Saturday night at its brewery tasting room and also hosts three live concerts in the brewer’s parking lot every summer. According to Gerber, Red Truck is always looking for new ways to bring the two passions of beer and music together.

To create the boombox, agency partner Will worked closely with the cardboard engineers and print specialists at Met Printers to design, prototype and test a box that could hold beers and also function as a passive amplifier, all without electronic components.

“For us, the way the piece sounded was just as important as the craft of its design,” says Will’s CCO Nick Richards. “We spent a lot of time working and re-working the amplifier until we got it sounding just right.”

The brewery also has plans to give one away at its third concert of the summer, happening this Saturday.

Red Truck is not the only beer brand that’s experimented with stereo-related packaging innovations: in 2019, Muskoka Beer invited users to get hoppy, releasing a mixer pack designed to look like an old-timey 1950s radio.