The Campaign

How does a beer brand promote moderate drinking without appearing hypocritical? Rather than creating a typical broadcast public service awareness campaign that a skeptical, much-preached-to audience had heard before, we built a unique experience that young Singaporeans would never forget. To have the most impact we decided to launch our campaign at ZoukOut – Singapore’s biggest party attracting over 40,000 party punters. We wanted to create a memorable experience at sunrise as the ultimate reward for drinking responsibly throughout the night. But there was a problem - because of Siloso Beach’s terrain and geographical positioning in the West of the island, partygoers have never enjoyed an unblocked sunrise. We thus created the Heineken Sunrise – an artificial man-made sun at Siloso Beach to reward responsible drinking. This sun was powered by a dance-reactive kinetic floor, where festival-goers’ dance steps fuelled the sunrise, promoting drink less, party more. As our objectives were to get our message out to our core audience and make people see Heineken as a socially responsible brand, PR coverage was crucial to the campaign. Results included coverage from over 55 local and international media outlets, creating 70 million impressions. This helped drive sizable shifts in brand scores on social responsibility, authority and closeness.

The Brief

The campaign targeted Singaporean cosmopolitan achievers, 18 to 35. They enjoy the nightlife and are open to new experiences. In our research* we found that many young adults were skeptical of any public-awareness campaigns and we would need to work hard to get through to them. As behavioural changes are nearly impossible to track, besides noting a decline in sales volume, we positioned our objectives differently: 1. Generating awareness of our campaign 2. Positioning Heineken as a ‘socially responsible’ brand * Source: Agency research 2013

Results

This campaign has been a tremendous success: 1. Generating awareness of our campaign With 55 pieces of media coverage, 52.7% were from Tier 1 and 2 media. This included local media as well as global publications like TrendHunter, Vault Magazine and Popwire. We generated 70 million impressions worth over S$490,000 .* 2. Positioning Heineken as a ‘socially responsible’ brand Heineken’s score on ‘Responsibility’ has risen by 5% for our core target in the month post-campaign**. This is significant given that its competitor Carlsberg fell 4% in the same period with the same audience. We have also seen scores on Uniqueness go up by 6%, Closeness by 4% and Authority by 5%. *Source: Agency internal PR evaluation (Impressions totaled from online sources, and PR value estimated at S$7500 per article) **Source: One Equity tracker Jan 2014 Males 18-44

Execution

We constructed the Heineken Sun Deck, housing a 10-metre wide man-made 'sun', a VIP chill-out area and a dance-reactive kinetic floor on the beach. With more of the partygoers’ steps, the brighter the sunrise would be. The dance steps over the two-day event were tracked on an LED screen displaying real-time visualizations and a countdown clock to the Heineken sunrise. Over a two-month period, a phased PR offensive was launched by first teasing key members of the media with a pair of Heineken-branded sunglasses with the tagline, ‘Night is a journey. Make sunrise the last stop.’ Members of the media were invited to the VIP Heineken tent at ZoukOut. To increase consumer participation, we engaged broadcast, broadsheets and lifestyle publications. To increase awareness pre-event, we invited fans to share photographs of sunrises with the hashtag #heinekensunrise to stand a chance to win a pair of tickets to ZoukOut.

The Situation

Binge drinking amongst young people is on the rise globally. This is due to many factors – more alcohol choices, a growing ‘party culture’, and alcohol being glamourized in music & film. It is slowly becoming a problem in Singapore too with the prevalence of excessive drinking doubling since 1992* and Singaporeans aged 18-35 being twice as likely to binge drink.** As the leading premium international beer brand in Singapore, Heineken needed to be at the forefront of dealing with this issue. * Source: Institute of Mental Health Singapore 2013 ** Source: Health Promotion Board Singapore 2013

The Strategy

To have the most impact we decided to launch our campaign at ZoukOut – Singapore’s biggest party attracting over 40,000 party punters. We wanted to create a memorable experience at sunrise as the ultimate reward for drinking responsibly throughout the night. However, because of Siloso Beach’s terrain and geographical positioning in the West of the island, partygoers have never enjoyed an unblocked sunrise. BIG IDEA: THE FIRST-EVER SUNRISE AT SENTOSA BELONGS TO MODERATE DRINKERS We constructed a 10 meter-wide sun on Sentosa that would deliver a spectacular sunrise to partygoers that drank moderately and stayed alert. We encouraged people to dance more by building a kinetic-powered dance floor that would make the sun shine even brighter. To make sure our reach was not limited to ZoukOut, we created a variety of video and image content that was both seeded on Heineken’s Facebook page and shared with the media.