Two pieces of Christmas work from Heineken, one so-so, one super.
First, the so-so:
This is only so-so because it's simply a Christmas take on the 'get people to write stuff in digital channels and we'll show it in the real world' mechanic. This is a mechanic we've seen many, many times before.
The people involved get extra credit for making the real-world Christmas tree really big and giving it a nice industrial / steampunk-lite aesthetic, but ultimately this is unoriginal. And although I understand why Heineken have based messages on pre-written copy (for colleagues, close family etc.) the execution would have been way better had they provided a free-text option and then moderated the submissions. Still, if you have lots of FB friends in Singapore you might well provide some content so it'll probably be counted as a success.
Next the super:
I love the mechanic here. It's simple, it takes advantage of the fact that the Internet is reaIly good at audience aggregation, and it's funny. Best of all I haven't seen it before. I prefer the mechanic to the product in fact; I'd love to see pay it forward as a standard offer from online retailers. After all, giving to others is better for us, psychologically speaking, than spending on ourselves.
Whatever you think of these ideas though, you have to give Heineken credit for the fact that they're experimenting. Beer brands are rooted in sociability, so the more they use social channels and mechanics to promote themselves the more their sociability message will land. Not everything will be successful but this is a pretty good start.
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