Heineken

Open Your World: Brand Positioning

Eight provocations for a strong proposition...

Future Purpose & Ambition

Heineken is the most widely distributed beer in the world. Good news, in many ways, but the challenge is for it not to be seen as ‘industrial’, or as the safe choice. The brand has worked with its Open Your World communications proposition for a long time and it has served them well.

However, if it’s to truly articulate future purpose and ambition, it was felt it now needs to be instilled with more energy and a sharper edge, Thus Heineken called on Crowd DNA to run activity that would challenge current perceptions of what Open Your World stands for – both within the brand and among their line-up of incumbent agencies.

Rather than conducting fresh consumer research – which would have been unnecessary in this instance – we gathered stimulus and direction via different sources:

Trends & Expert Views

1: We tapped into our significant back catalogue of insights on the target audience of 20/30-something males - particularly looking at themes such as risk aversion and their appetite for new experiences

2: We combined this with meticulous trends analysis and a series of interviews with experts who could bring transferable learnings into play - such as the CEO of a male skincare company and the organiser of extreme adventure holidays

Provocations

We packaged our work into eight provocations: a collection of ways to disrupt entrenched thinking about what Open Your World represents; including how it could now refer to greater emotional openness among males, or as evolving attitudes to borders and different cultures.

Stimulus Material

We produced stimulus material (posters, short films, collected artefacts) to represent each provocation, running a workshop event in Amsterdam, at which Heineken and its agencies immersed themselves in the ideas, and where we collectively designed a dynamic and purposeful new vision for Open Your World.

A winning provocation emerged from the pack, laying impressive foundations for new campaign work.

Creating stimulus material to ignite fresh thinking
Creating stimulus material to ignite fresh thinking
Shaping up the provocations
Shaping up the provocations

  • Narrated Galleries

    We love films, but narrated galleries – fusing showreels of still images and audio of participant commentary – creates outputs that allow for high levels of reflection and audience empathy. Ideal for user experience work, in other words

  • Crowd Communities

    We’ve a wealth of experience at setting up and managing communities for clients, with learnings on how best to engage audiences and a full box of tricks for maximising what we get out of the work – including geo tagging, streaming in social media data and a mobile optimised platform

  • Pinterest

    We’ve used Pinterest to really good effect on a number of projects recently, helping us to explore differences and commonalities among different typologies in areas such as fashion and style, home, holidays and entertainment. Engagement levels with participants always rank high, and clients love the vividness and clarity of the findings.

  • Citizen Journalism

    Citizen journalism works on the principle of making reporters of our participants, briefing them to capture what’s happening in the lives of their friends and family via video dispatches and blogging. It gets us places where we can’t otherwise get. It bypasses the bias of having a researcher in attendance. People are often more accurate reporters on those around them than on themselves, so that’s another bias circumnavigated.

  • Network Audits

    If you want to really understand how people interact with those around them, it’s logical to research interconnected groups of friends, family and work colleagues. First developed as part of our award winning word of mouth research for Guardian News & Media, and since then refined and reconfigured across a range of global projects, our network audit approach helps us understand who’s influencing who as authentically as possible.