Heineken
The task
Our team was tasked with supporting Heineken and the launch of Heineken 0.0 in the U.S. market via their social media platforms. We partnered with Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram to increase brand visibility in the market.
CHALLENGES
A tight deadline, a lack of familiarity with the brand's principles and guidelines, a lack of visibility into the lead agencies' workflow, and difficulties in transferring large files were among the most prominent challenges. The stages of production for working files were not always clear when final comps were sent to our team, and, lastly, Heineken's brands were perceived as “foreign” and “too European” by American consumers, which impacted the performance of our creatives.
GOALS
Our primary goal was to effectively integrate with the lead agencies' workflows and familiarize ourselves with the brand's guidelines. We sought to use this opportunity to help Heineken directly reach the American market by developing creatives that American consumers could relate to. We set the following goals:
- Merge with the agencies' workflows as soon as possible
- Improve communication with the lead agencies
- Standardize the stages of production for working files and accept scrub files as final comps
- Obtain as many legacy working files as possible to add to our asset library
- Serve as a bridge between the global creative team and the American market
- Create content specifically targeted at American consumers
- Change the brand's voice on social media to better connect with the American audience
- Explore new and interesting ways to communicate with the American market
Results
Our emojis were particularly successful early on, giving us the opportunity to support Heineken’s marketing team. They are still in use today. The Greenwrks team was given the opportunity to experiment with new ways to reach out to the market, such as our partnership with CoolerScreens.This partnership provided Greenwrks with incredible metrics that were then used and added to our best practices. The print campaigns performed better than previous years and helped Heineken to continue selling their products during a global pandemic.
Twitter Emojis
Initially, we were tasked with creating two emojis for a partnership with Twitter, which was set to go live in the third quarter of 2019. I was assigned to this project and created clean, minimalistic illustrations of the iconic green Heineken can and the newer Heineken 0.0 can. The Heineken emojis on Twitter were hugely successful in the United States—so much so that Heineken Global adopted our assets and continues to use them worldwide.
LOCALIZED WEB BANNER PROGRAM
Our team was tasked with developing a web banner program targeting specific areas in the U.S. to create content that resonated with American consumers. When our creatives were tested against those of the lead agency, our banners outperformed theirs, despite the agency having a larger budget and more time to work on their designs.
Digital campaign
Snapchat
Our team took point on the summer and Fourth of July campaigns and created a set of Snapchat filters. The goal established Heineken’s presence on the platform as the partnership was started a few months before Greenwkrs joined the company. I was asked to lead this project. I focused on the good times Heineken brings to our consumers and siezed the opportunity to share them with the world. After that, our filters were tested against the leading agency they outperformed the agency’s creatives.
Heineken’s emojis go cross platform
Giphy
Heineken launched a partnership with Giphy at the same time our team joined the company. This consisted of stickers for social media. Heineken wanted to focus on Instagram due to the popularity of Instagram stories. This was a great opportunity for us to use the Heineken emojis to come up with a design system for the stickers. We needed them to be fun, relatable, straight to the point, and, especially, American.
Our team worked on a content calendar for the rest of the year. We decided to work on two campaigns for the last two quarters of 2019 and prepare two other campaigns that were being worked on for the following year. The campaigns for 2019 were evergreen and holidays. The other two campaigns were Summer of Cans and US Open—with US Open being one of the most important programs in the U.S. for Heineken. Our set of stickers has over 40 million impressions on the platform to date.
evergreen Stickers
A set of three animated stickers that were going to run all year long on Giphy. I worked on these illustrations and the animations. The primary purpose was to join the space and to remain as simple as possible to increase the use of the stickers on Instagram.
Holiday
Our team knew that holidays were always our best shot at being relevant at the end of the year. We needed to be smart when choosing the program because we didn’t have the budget to work on smaller holidays, such as Halloween. We decided to stick to the three assets, with myself working on the illustrations and the team animating them. This was the fastest way of completing the project.
SUmmer of cans
This was a larger project than the previous two due to the size of the program. Heineken was putting considerable funding behind this program, which was projected to push an updated 16oz can and a 20oz slim can that was being introduced to the market. We maintained the assets that were sustainable to our workflow— but we made a few tweaks. First, we increased the size of the set to six stickers. Second, I was able to spearhead the project on my own due to the more relaxed deadline.
US OPEN
The most important program was based not just on online visibility, but (of course) budget. We went back to the three sticker set due to the short duration of the program, and we wanted to optimize our chances of the stickers being used during the tournament. Once again, I maintained the same minimal and relatable approach.
The stickers performed amazingly during the program, with all of them having millions of impressions on Giphy.
Greenwrks was tasked with supporting campaigns on social media after the early success on above the line projects. Our task was to support the leading agency on organic content creation to help minimize the agency’s annual fees. During this time, most of the assets for social media verticals were being provided by Heineken Global — and a major part of this content included snippets of television commercials. This created a disconnection between the brand and the American market, causing the content to underperform. One of our most popular posts was a reactive House of the Dragon season finale feed asset. We also leveraged the stickers to encourage consumers to use them in their stories.
HEINEKEN website
INTRODUCING HEINEKEN SILVER TO THE US
Heineken silver giphy campaing
A set of three animated stickers that were going to run all year long on Giphy. I worked on these illustrations and the animations. The primary purpose was to join the space and to remain as simple as possible to increase the use of the stickers on Instagram.
Coachella
Summer
MIAMI JUST GOT MESSIER
Heineken had the opportunity to partner with InterMiami when Lionel Messi finalized his contract with the team. The brand leadership wanted to use this opportunity to bring attention to the ongoing partnership between the company and the soccer team. The task was rejected by Heineken’s lead agency due to the short deadline. Our team was tasked with taking over the project on the morning of June 8, 2023—with a 3pm hard deadline.
My concept was chosen by the Heineken brand team. I took point on the project as lead designer and worked with the brand team to finalize the asset before sending it for final approval to a team that included: Heineken, MLS, InterMiami, and Messi’s team. I delivered the asset before the deadline, which generated a lot of enthusiasm around the higher-ups on the brand team. They decided to turn this organic post into a paid program. A substantial budget was assigned to this campaign and the results were amazing! The post received over 100,000 likes and hundreds of thousands impressions on the platform, making it the most successful social media post in 2023 to date. Messi’s welcome post surpassed the previous Coachella campaign that was given a bigger budget and held the number one spot at the time.
My concept was chosen by the Heineken brand team. I took point on the project as lead designer and worked with the brand team to finalize the asset before sending it for final approval to a team that included: Heineken, MLS, InterMiami, and Messi’s team. I delivered the asset before the deadline, which generated enthusiasm around the higher-ups on the brand team. They decided to turn this organic post into a paid program. A substantial budget was assigned to this campaign and the results were amazing! The post received over 100,000 likes and hundreds of thousands impressions on the platform, making it the most successful social media post in 2023 to date. Messi’s welcome post surpassed the previous Coachella campaign—which was given a bigger budget and held the number one spot at the time.
Heineken’s the closer
Greenwrks was assigned to support Heineken’s The Closer campaign in all social verticals including Billy Eichner’s partnership activation and other national campaigns. The Closer wasn't just a product behind a marketing campaign, but a product that had practical utility and shined a light on issues affecting the modern workplace. Our team finalized the rollout for this campaign, and it exceeded our expectations. This campaign generated so much hype for the product that it was almost impossible to get ahold of one. Heineken’s effort to highlight the social conundrum where overtime is the norm, everyone is obsessed with upward mobility to the point of burnout was recognized by the Cannes Lion Awards.
The Heineken USA marketing team was honored with a Gold Lion in brand experience, two Silver, and one Bronze, respectively. Heineken’s total number of awards for the year was 21, making this the most successful year for the brand..
HEINEKEn TAKEs OVER the oculus NYC
We were tasked with supporting the digital out of home summer campaign in New York City at the Oculus at One World Trade Center. We designed several assets using lifestyle images and motion graphics to play around the station.
innovating the way we reach out to our consumers
cooler screens PARTNERSHIP
We team up with CoolerScreens in August 2019 to increase our household penetration and sales in selected stores around the U.S. CoolerScreens brought a fresh approach to marketing and a new way to reach consumers while making convenience stores and pharmacies appear modern and sleek. CoolerScreens offered us a new canvas to produce data-driven creatives—and we welcomed the challenge! The brief called for several assets to be displayed in different sections of the cooler screen at different times, triggered by the position of the prospective consumer. A full-door ad would play even if there was no one in front of the cooler. Once the shopper approached the cooler, the full-door ad would transform into a beautiful and organized layout, showcasing the products inside the cooler as well as short clips and animated tags.
project goals
- Increase sales
- Explore new and exciting ways to reach consumers
- Prove the value of a longer partnership with CoolerScreens
outcome
Our creatives outperformed the evergreen global assets and considerably increased sales in the selected stores where the screens were tested. In some stores, the increase was up 15% during a fairly short testing phase. Our creatives were in the top 10% of performance according to CoolerScreens, and they were even used in their best practices deck. More importantly, this showed Heineken the importance of high quality creatives, and we were happy to assist them on that front.
Heineken AD
This was the first batch of assets our team was assigned to kick off the partnership with CoolerScreens. The initial ask was to make it “as Heineken as possible” without losing interest due to the brand’s perception as “foreign.” As I was assigned this project, I chose to go with a dynamic approach that could capture consumer attention. I didn’t want to be too invasive — I wanted to “wink” at them, invite them to get closer, and entice them to get an ice-cold Heineken.
Heineken 0.0 AD
This program was given a smaller budget than the lager program because the product was fairly new to the market. People didn’t know what a Heineken 0.0 was—and we couldn’t blame them. When was the last time you were interested in alcohol-free “beer” while shopping? The answer is, most likely, never. That’s why we siezed the opportunity to introduce the product as the new, cool kid on the block. We wanted to send the message that drinking alcohol-free beer could be just as cool as a regular beer in the right setting.
Cooler tags
I was tasked with creating tags for Heineken and Heineken 0.0 that highlighted important details about our products. This project came after the first batch of assets performed well, increasing sales across all of the selected stores. I created a set of tags that aimed to complement the products instead of distracting from the cans.
print CAMPAIGN
Our team took on a great deal of work on the print side almost as soon as we joined Heineken. We worked on the first Heineken 0.0 campaign and took over the main programs for 2020 by the time the pandemic hit. Heineken then underwent restructuring that brought a massive flow of local and national print programs, including MLS, Summer of Cans, and Pride. This cemented our position as the lead agency for Heineken and Heineken 0.0. Our print team grew during the pandemic, with our primary goal to run the entire print side of Heineken’s portfolio. Additionally, we engendered to use their knowledge of the brand to help a third-party team incorporate Heineken’s print campaign into their semi-automated platform.
The introduction of this platform helped our team leverage key visuals in a fraction of the time. This platform also gave our team full control of the analytics behind each print program. We used this information to funnel down the main print elements each brand needed, and did away with all the outdated pieces that weren’t being used. Our team also used this opportunity to standardize print elements to maintain a consistent look and feel. This was challenging to achieve at low levels because we had no visibility on the production of these print pieces.
creating new key visuals
I had the opportunity to also create new key visuals. Up until this point, we had only worked with creatives that came from a lead agency. Heineken had to reassign parts of the print programs due to the pandemic. My team was assigned to create a series of key visuals that weren’t going run for several months. The project was called “Occasions.” It was a partnership with Uber to increase sales during the period that bars were closed. The primary goal of the project was to show the public that they could still enjoy a Heineken product while quarantining for COVID-19. Our team handled the creative direction and worked together with a local agency in a small photoshoot. This was a huge opportunity, and one that we had been waiting to add to our team scope.
Challenges
Small and inflexible budget.
Short deadline and high volume of work.
Production delays due to people contracting COVID-19.
Our solution
We kept it simple, straight to the point — and kept a close eye on the budget. We decided to work with Heineken’s lead creative agency to cut costs. This was their final shooting for Heineken due to the fact that our team had absorbed most of their workload and Heineken needed a smaller, less involved, and more cost-effective agency. We narrowed down a few occasions that communicated the message in a short and concise way. We relied on relatable copy and aspirational visuals to bring hope to our consumers during hard times.
Results
This campaign not only helped Heineken to increase sales after a successful partnership with Uber, but also helped us to gain insights into the way people were interacting with our product during the pandemic. These insights reaffirmed for Heineken that they needed to pivot away from on premise and move to selling their product online using third parties, such as Drizly and Mikmak. Heineken had successful partnerships with both companies and our online sales helped the company to balance after the closure of bars during the pandemic.
