How Heineken leverages brand authority to stay relevant
By Ralph Tathagata
The brewing industry is changing fast. To master the art of relevance, an established beer brand must leverage its authority to tap into the youthful thirst for adventure. For such a brand to remain in the top spot of favoured millennial beer, it must maintain a high degree of process efficiency and produce high quality beer.
According to Watson-Marlow’s Brewery Report, supported by the International Centre of Brewing Science, by 2025, the global beer market is projected to reach $685.4 billion.
A research conducted by BERA Brand Management stated that there are five stages of development that parallel human relationships – new, dating, love, boredom and divorce. In order for a brand to maintain a solid relationship with its consumers, it needs to avoid the boredom and divorce stage. It must remain “fresh” and “exciting” to its loyalists.
Leveraging the intersection of its brand authority and cultural trends to best connect with millennial consumers, Heineken, one of the world’s indisputable leading premium lager beers, has consistently maintained its international stature and credentials in Nigeria, Africa’s largest market.
Millennials are often misunderstood as the “over-stimulated” generation. This has led to a myth that the millennial generation is disloyal and will jump to the next best brand as soon as they are bored with the first. To the contrary, millennials are an extremely loyal generation and will maintain a relationship with a brand as long as they continue to receive functional, emotional and participative benefits.
To connect with its millennial consumers, inspire them and talk about what they care about, Heineken has continued to align itself with millennial values, which explains why the premium beer ranks high in the demographic.
The champion brand which, for many years, has not only been the proud sponsor of the UEFA Champions League, but brought the Champions League trophy to Nigeria, maintains a towering stature in the Nigerian market.
The secret to its towering leadership position perhaps lies in the Five Love Lessons for Marketing to Millennials, which includes understanding the headwinds and tailwinds of millennial culture, seeking the intersection of your brand authority and cultural trends, keeping it fresh because love doesn’t stand still (i.e., boys will look at other brands), engaging your consumer as a participant and do not refer to them as a target audience and disrupting your last success because if you don’t someone else will.
What’s more, Heineken’s winning design in its sleek can has led to a winning proposition, which now contributes a significant portion of the Heineken volume.
Basically in Nigeria, beer consumers like large volumes hence the 33cl, the consumers have accepted and want to be seen with it. In fact, Heineken sleek can has become a prominent feature at parties and events in the country.
Having transformed over the years into a global icon Heineken is sold in more than 192 countries. To maintain its hallmark for quality in the Nigerian lager beer market, Heineken uses the highest quality ingredients across the board and the process is very standardized. It is set up from the centre. So, it is controlled centrally from Amsterdam.
MARKETING EDGE intelligence reveals that, for a brewery to qualify to brew Heineken anywhere in the world, it has to go through a very rigorous process. Nigerian Breweries Plc has eight breweries in Nigeria and Heineken is not produced in all of them. This means that the quality expected to produce Heineken is high and that is what has been set up as a standard globally.
According to the brand owners, every brew of Heineken has to be approved in Amsterdam before it goes out to the market. There are lots of quality checks and that’s why even if the demand for Heineken is very high, they cannot produce too much of it because they can’t rush the process.
One of the major temporary features on the Heineken’s sleek can was the UEFA Champions League trophy. Heineken has been sponsoring the Champions League for many years basically to bring that association to its teeming millennial consumers at first hand level.
In Nigeria, football is one of the biggest passion points for millennial consumers and the Champions League remains the highest level of football and it has delivered a lot for the Heineken brand. This could be seen on static and digital Out-of-Home, TV, and radio as a way of driving Heineken’s partnership and brand association with the Champions League.
In 2021, Heineken’s “Never Watching Alone” campaign which drove a connective and communal message through celebrities still runs for the second year in 2022 and resonates with consumers. It was a local tour spring where the brand owners got some celebrities to drive the message home, and to also make it resonate more with the consumers. It is a global campaign for UEFA Champions League that Heineken used in the COVID-19 era in 2020 and 2021.
Arguably, Heineken could be described as the closest global companion of football fans as far as the best of football goes. As the best of beers, Heineken also brings the best of football experience to the Nigerian consumers. Therefore, UEFA Champions League being the pinnacle, the highest level of football goes with the positioning of Heineken as the most premium international beer.
For over 27 years, the gains of Heineken’s time-tested sponsorship and association with UEFA Champions League can only be compared with a happy and successful marriage. And football being the number one passion point of Nigerians, ties easily with the platform. In fact, when the campaign was tested in Nigeria and other countries, Nigeria got the highest score globally in terms of connecting with the message and the passion portrayed in the commercial. The UEFA Champions League remains a very relevant platform for the Heineken brand.
Heineken has left no stone unturned in making itself the most contemporary beer brand in its category. Its product placement with James Bond movies, the very international man of the world, ties with its formal positioning as ‘Be the man of the world’.
To maintain a responsible corporate citizen and encourage its teeming consumers because it can get them drunk if they drink it too much, Heineken launched “When You Drive Never Drink” campaign, which focused on the root causes of drink driving. The campaign was basically a reminder to all beer drinkers that Heineken loves them to drink it as a premium beer brand, a fantastic beer, but keep it to a limit and when you drink, don’t risk people’s lives by going into a car to drive.
Interestingly, Heineken Nigeria has a global mandate of 10% of its media. One out of every 10 Naira spent in the media has to go into this campaign without any regulatory or government regulation. This is just Heineken being a corporate citizen; taking 10% of its media spend on promoting responsible drinking and reminding its loyal consumers that they should stay safe.
Heineken was one of the first global brands to invest in the Lagos Fashion and Design Week, a sponsorship that has been broadening the reach of the Heineken brand because of its feminine positioning. Adding it to the teeming football audience, Heineken reaches out to a broader set of consumers, first-hand through their passion points.
During Heineken’s tour of 2019, an impressive number of its Nigerian consumers were thrilled in a momentous football match by Carles Puyol Saforcada, a UEFA Champions league legend and Heineken Ambassador. Bringing the trophy to Nigeria made it more tangible as it gave you a different kind of feeling to Heineken consumers.
The unforgettable match was played by Puyol and his team representing Heineken and Nigerian football legend, Jay Jay Okocha and his team, representing Shine Shine Bobo (STAR). At the end, the marketing goal for the initiative was successfully achieved as it was the first time the Heineken hit its one million hectoliter volume. Although it was rested in 2021, Heineken hinted that it is trying to bring back the initiative this year.
Meritoriously, Heineken has won the prestigious MARKETING EDGE Premium Lager Beer Brand of the Decade award, an honour industry watchers judged as “well deserved”. In a similar vein, Heineken also won the African Brand Leadership Merit Award, and Africa’s Best World Class Premium Quality Brand of the Decade.
In all, the awards point to deserving recognition of what the founding fathers of the brand Heineken put in place.
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