Execution

The beer category in Singapore is becoming ever more competitive. Heineken has long enjoyed a strong position in this market place, but now needs to work harder than ever to reinforce its premium, international and innovative brand positioning with its target audience. Our challenge was to raise awareness (and thus consumption) for the brand by bringing to life their ‘Open your world’ positioning in a way that was relevant to the festive season. This time of year is traditionally a beer-drinking occasion, but hard working Singaporeans were starting to trade in real-life get-togethers for interactions on social media – spending more time on Facebook than any other country in the world, at almost 39 minutes per session. To remind consumers what the spirit of Christmas was really about, Heineken created the world’s first Christmas tree powered by social media friendship. On Facebook we created a simple application for users to send their friends’ festive greetings. The app pulled their friends’ profile photos and displayed them on a 360-degree virtual version of our tree, accompanied by a festive message. After posting the greetings on their friends’ profiles, we then broadcast them on the real tree, literally taking their online celebrations, offline. To cap it off, we captured videos of each greeting and posted them back to users and their friends on Facebook. Every interaction ensured shareabilty and peer endorsement – all with Heineken at its heart. It quickly gained traction amongst our consumers as it allowed them to show their friends they knew how to celebrate the festive period in a unique way. On top of the practical role our tree had to play in the campaign, we wanted to create an art piece that had value in its own right. Something that people would want to come and visit and share with friends; something that could communicate and celebrate the magic of communing with loved ones at Christmas and create an emotional reaction from our consumers. We wanted to strike a balance between creating an installation that was recognisably Heineken (in terms of branding and style/tone), and had an interesting, raw architectural quality, to differentiate it further from your average Christmas tree. Because of the location of the tree, it was important that it was visually arresting. The 11-metre high structure took two weeks to make and was built from black steel tubing and fixed with 48, 40-inch LED screens. The tree was topped with a giant red star – both a signifier of Christmas and the Heineken brand. The screens were all mapped together on one server and effectively could operate as one giant digital billboard, automatically pulling approved content from our Facebook application. However, using several CPUs and video splitters also allowed us to independently control each screen and therefore run a variety of content on the tree at any one time. Consumers at Clarke Quay could interact with the tree through a touchscreen booth, which took their photo and immediately turned it into a tree ornament on one of the screens. We curated a virtual choir to sing our rewritten version of the 12 Days of Christmas – we filmed singers from 20 countries around the world, harmonised the tracks and played it out live for passing consumers to enjoy. Specially created, abstract audio-visual displays (inspired by the nature of social media friendships) ran on the tree as interludes between all the above content. All communications / brand experiences were designed to surprise, entertain and delight the Heineken consumer. It was critical that we shared the joy of Christmas in a way that was genuine and authentic. The Heineken Social Tree surpassed all KPI’s. Over 300,000 people visited the tree over the promotional period, whilst we reached 3.2 million through engagement and earned media. A sales increase of over 38% was recorded, compared to the same period last year.