Heineken is much loved and purchased everywhere in the world. But not here. In Australia, brand awareness is high but propensity to buy is not. In cluttered bottle shop and bar environments, Heineken had struggled to own the path to purchase. We needed a circuit breaker.
Our goal was clear: surround Australian drinkers. To surprise and delight them whether they bought beer at their regular bar, bottle shop or somewhere new.
But with Gen Y and Gen Z as our target audience, we faced a challenge. These consumers are fickle, brand-fluid, and constantly switching—one week choosing one beer brand in Dan Murphy’s, the next week they're trying a different beer brand from a bar, or even online.
We needed to get Gen Y & Gen Z to choose Heineken whenever and wherever they were. We needed to be relevant. We needed to be cool. And we needed to be surprising.
The easy answer would have been to pool all our budget into one, big splash F1 promotion – then run it in all 5x retailers and 8x bars. That may have worked for Gen X. But Gen Y and Gen Z would soon get bored and we would have lacked retailer support.
So instead, we ran 6 x unique activations, each tailored to a different retail or on-premise environment:
- #1 Dan Murphy’s: Test your reaction time to win a $10,000 F1 experience
- #2 BWS: Spin an F1-inspired track to win a trip to the F1 in Las Vegas
- #3 LMG: Pick your favorite F1 sounds to win a trip to the Singapore Grand Prix
- #4 Independents: Win a Bang & Olufsen portable speaker every hour
- #5 First Choice: Test your reactions in a "Drive to Survive" style Batak challenge
- #6 On Premise: Share your Heineken moments through photos and videos
Running six activations simultaneously was like managing six F1 teams at once—a complex challenge that required seamless coordination. But the results proved it was the right approach.
Every campaign generated huge engagement, had strong retailer support and increased visibility in key outlets and Heineken owned the conversation—surprising and delighting both loyal and new drinkers.
By meeting our audience wherever they were, with experiences that felt fresh, relevant, and exciting, we didn’t just drive sales—we made Heineken the ultimate choice for Gen Y & Gen Z in Australia.
