HEINEKEN'S THE SUB CHINA LAUNCH

TitleHEINEKEN'S THE SUB CHINA LAUNCH
BrandHEINEKEN
Product / ServiceHEINEKEN THE SUB
CategoryB01. Mobile Websites
EntrantRAZORFISH, CHINA
Idea Creation RAZORFISH, CHINA
PR SHINE COMMUNICATIONS Shanghai, CHINA
Production SHINE COMMUNICATIONS Shanghai, CHINA

Credits

Name Company Position
Lynn Liu Razorfish Senior Account Executive
Staney Zhao Shine Communications Account Executive

The Campaign

We identified that if we could find the early adopters and trend setters amongst the young Chinese men that make up Heineken’s target audience, we could create enough buzz around The Sub to reach its future fans. Welcome: The Sub Crew. We established the concept of The Sub Crew to teach China’s young men why the Sub was so innovative. The Sub Crew helped people who demanded more out of life – gourmands at the forefront of food and beverage tastes and technology. The Sub Crew operated as a strategic educational squad, a lifestyle channel and a digital H5 initiation site to get more Heineken men in on this new and improved way to drink beer.

Creative Execution

The Sub Crew had three branches of execution: 1) The Sub Crew: A squad of brand educators dropped by the offices of leading fashion and lifestyle magazines, as well as the homes of key opinion leaders. They taught China’s most stylish men how to pour quality drafts, which helped lead to millions of social media impressions. 2) The Sub Feast: We emphasized the uncompromising gourmet attitude that would demand high quality draft beer even at home by establishing partnerships with Youfan Club, a popular foodie social app, and through a private party in Shanghai with two top lifestyle consultants. 3) We created an H5 page housed in the Heineken fan channel on China’s most popular mobile social network, WeChat, which used a fun, interactive digital experience to teach how to use The Sub. Users were scored and could share the interaction to win a Sub of their own.

Heineken successfully opened up the Chinese at-home beer market to new possibilities. During the half year of the campaign’s run, sales in China averaged 50% of the global sales of The Sub total. The Sub was consistently the most popular product on Heineken’s TMall, accounting for 70% of its visits and half of its sales. The TMall page racked up 28 million impressions. Heineken’s fan page on WeChat alone accounted for 150,000+ social impressions, with 7000+ Heineken fans using and sharing The Sub’s H5 digital interaction.

In line with its global Man of the World campaign, Heineken’s target audience in China is 18-35 year-old cosmopolitan men. We wanted to not only promote the new product, but lead directly to increased sales. We created a combined offline-online strategy that would drive buzz around The Sub, and make buying one incredibly easy. The offline activities were exclusive events built to gain social media traction, including visits to leading men’s fashion magazines, a private party with two popular lifestyle consultants and even putting The Sub in between Alibaba’s Jack Ma and the King of the Netherlands! Offline assets helped drive sharing online on China’s most popular networks. All posts led to The Sub’s TMall shopping page, so that anyone intrigued by The Sub’s promise of fresh tasting, high quality draft beer could click to buy it immediately.

Links

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