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"In the 19th century, the beer industry wasn\u2019t run by multi-billion-dollar conglomerates that could brew and ship millions of bottles with the push of a button. \nAt that time, the budding industry was spearheaded by entrepreneurial brewers who had to invent recipes, brewing processes and taste profiles before they ever shipped a single bottle.\nSee also: Why 3M's Marketing Sticks With Millennials and DIY'ers\nOne such man was Gerard Adriaan Heineken, who set up his family\u2019s first brewery in Amsterdam in 1864 and spent most of the subsequent years toying with and perfecting a recipe for Heineken lager. \nThe brand could have probably been brought to market in the 1860s, but Gerard Heineken chose to be patient. He had larger, global aspirations for his brew, and he knew that if he sacrificed quality in order to make a quick buck, Heineken would never be the premium, globe-trotting \"gentleman\u2019s beer\" that he envisioned.\nIn 1874, Gerard Heineken finally decided his family\u2019s lager was stable enough to travel and, thus, ready to be enjoyed by men around the world who wanted to stand out.\nToday, the beer scion\u2019s patience and determination has paid off. His family\u2019s lager is sold in more than 196 countries and is known worldwide as a premium beer. \n\"The Heineken brand has been designed to travel since the beginning,\" Gianluca Di Tondo, Heineken\u2019s senior global brand director tells Mashable. \"Beer was for everyone, but Heineken was designed as a recipe to be a premium beer.\"\n\u2018The legendary man\u2019\nNearly 140 years after its lager reached international shores, Heineken continues to tinker with its image and advertising tactics. Last year in particular, the brand says, Heineken went to great lengths to unify its marketing strategies and rethink its key metrics. \n\nIn recent years, Heineken\u2019s most well-known campaign has been its \"Open Your World\" platform. In the video series, which has appeared widely on TV and online, a \"Legendary Man of the World\" embarks on a number of adventures. In the series\u2019 debut video from 2011, Heineken\u2019s \"Man of the World\" makes the party entrance of a lifetime, schmoozing with aristocrats, going step-for-step with a martial arts master and wowing partygoers with his sonorous flute playing. \nIn other editions, the \"legendary\" man is equally impressive, evading villains on a train after being mistaken for James Bond in one movie and, in Heineken\u2019s most recent episode, dashing through the illuminated streets of Hong Kong to find a mysterious woman. \nThe \"Legendary Man\" has been the pillar of Heineken\u2019s campaign since 2010, meant to create brand persona and spur brand recognition.\n\"We want to tap into consumer need and consumer behavior to help them be men of the world, instead of just trying to sell our beer,\" says Heineken Global Communications Manager Anuraag Trikha. \nLocal executions\nWhat makes the \"Open Your World\" campaign so effective is that Heineken positioned it to be a platform, not a one-off commercial. With each edition of the series, Heineken created local executions and digital appendages that bolster the campaign\u2019s messaging and reach new consumers, both on-the-ground and on social media.\n\nAs part of the brand\u2019s 2013 \"Voyage\" spot, for instance, Heineken created \"Departure Roulette,\" an on-the-ground installation at New York\u2019s John F. Kennedy Airport that gave wary travelers the opportunity to ditch their current trip and fly to an unknown city on Heineken's dime. Some travelers, predictably, said they couldn't break their plans. Others, however, skittishly signed up for the opportunity. One man, chuckling, had to call his grandparents and tell them that he\u2019d be flying to the destination he received from Heineken\u2019s roulette board, Nicosia, Cyprus, instead of going on vacation with them to Vienna. \nWith \"Departure Roulette\" and other local executions, Heineken says it\u2019s seeking to promote a global message with location-specific and viral accompaniments.\n\"We want to create topspin that makes the campaign relevant and local,\" says Di Tondo.\nReal-time marketing\nOnce Heineken launched \"Departure Roulette,\" it didn't sit back and wait for the data to come in. Instead, the brand dove right into the conversation and gleaned insights from the chatter.\n\ni wanna do this!! Heineken asks U 2 Play departure Roulette http://t.co/8UliKyXKeC cc: @YogiRoth @Brett_Hughes @kingaphilipps @Jaeldepardo\n\u2014 Angela Sun (@sunnyangela) July 20, 2013\n\nOn Twitter, Heineken observed, throngs of users expressed that they would have loved to have taken part in the experiment. To address that concern and display how flexible and reactive its marketing is, Heineken tracked down some of those users and asked them if they remembered tweeting about \"Departure Roulette.\" Stunned, the users were then given the opportunity to play the game. \nMore recently, Heineken overheard on Facebook that many consumers felt its \"Odyssey\" commercial was trying to pass of actors as real people with amazing talents. To dispel the rumors, the brand released a tongue-in-cheek response video that addressed specific user comments and showed the characters\u2019 actual audition tapes. \n\nHeineken's video response to 'Odyssey' criticismDi Tondo says the brand swoons when it's allowed to brandish its wit as part of a real-time marketing spot. \n\"YouTube liberates the marketer,\" he says. \"You\u2019re free from the straight jacket of a 30-second TV commercial and you can leverage power of creative to the max.\"\nEmbracing the 'second screen'\nWhether Heineken shows up at a consumer\u2019s place of work or reaches out to him or her on social media, the brand prides itself on seeking out its consumers and joining them in their passions and hobbies.\nThe brand\u2019s largest digital interaction to date was its \"Share the Sofa\" campaign during the 2012 UEFA Champions League season. In preliminary research, Heineken discovered that 70% of UEFA viewers watch the matches alone, so the brand went to work on how it could join its consumers on their couches and on their devices. \nThe best method of meeting them, it reasoned, was to find them on their second screen, (e.g. a tablet or smartphone). According to Heineken, 65% of UCL viewers use a \"second screen\" during matches. \n\nWhat does it feel like to win the Champions League, Fernando? @Heineken #ShareTheSofa\n\u2014 Colin Udoh (@ColinUdoh) May 24, 2014\n\nTo join fans, Heineken created the #SharetheSofa hashtag. As part of the nine-month campaign, consumers were given the opportunity to have their questions answered by soccer stars or even watch a soccer match with a UCL star. \nOverall, Heineken says, \"Share the Sofa\" was a groundbreaking campaign for the brand. Not only was it birthed from careful data collection and insight study, it was able to eventually leverage emerging technologies and consumer habits to create a more relevant brand experience. \n\"During the games itself, we can see in real-time who\u2019s engaging with us and who are the biggest influencers,\" says Paul Smailes, Heineken\u2019s global head of digital. \n\"We\u2019ve reached more than 55 million people through this activation with more than 1.2 billion impressions. We\u2019ve seen association up 7% and purchase intent up 11 %,\" he adds.\nWatch the video above to see how the Heineken team brews up its clever marketing in Amsterdam.\n      window._msla=window.loadScriptAsync||function(src,id){if(document.getElementById(id))return;var js=document.createElement('script');js.id=id;js.src=src;document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);};\n_msla(\"//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\",\"twitter_jssdk\");"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/05/27/heineken-marketing-strategy/>