What it meant for the brand

Heineken saw impressive volume sales growth, increase in penetration and revenue. What’s more, this activity proved to be a watershed moment for them and resulted in a complete restructure of their existing communications framework to one which was more responsive, always-on, real-time, and deeply data driven.

What we made

We recruited the ‘Special One’ himself, José Mourinho, to issue a rallying cry. Using broadcast media to deliver scale and drama. We then joined the online conversation, creating over 1,000 modular pieces of social content to dismiss any lame excuses for not getting together. Optimised for mobile, these data-driven personalised messages were highly targeted and contextual; taking into account live localised data, such as the weather.

The living idea

Champion UCL matches as special, social occasions that encourage friends to watch the football together with a Heineken.

The insight

Our research unveiled that most people were choosing to watch the match at home and were happy with a local beer. Heineken was felt to be a premium beer enjoyed only on special occasions.

The challenge

Despite high awareness of Heineken’s UCL sponsorship, volume sales growth was declining.

Background

After being appointed as Heineken’s global creative partner in 2015, we set a new shared ambition to ‘become the benchmark of creativity and effectiveness in mobile-first communications.’ 

It has helped reshape the marketing of this iconic brand; bringing creative and media closer together with a focus on personalised data-driven content at scale. One brilliant example of this is the work we did to support their Champions League sponsorship.