Heineken on why now is the right time to tell the world it ‘is more than just one brand’

Heineken is launching a campaign aimed at recruiting a new generation of employees, as it looks to convince them of its global influence and shake off the perception that Heineken is only made up of “one brand”.

The digital ‘Go Places’ campaign focuses on a manifesto film, in which the brewer seeks to convince viewers “that the company is like no other”. There is also an interactive element to the activity, called ‘The Interview’, in which the online presenter looks to determine the participant’s personality type by asking 12 questions. According to the company, having the right personality type is “crucial”.

The campaign, created by creative studio Cloudfactory, will run across Facebook and LinkedIn.

Promoting Heineken ‘the company’

Gianluca Di Tondo, senior director of the global Heineken brand, told Marketing Week that “now was the right moment” for the company to present itself to the world. According to Heineken, one of the company’s main challenges is that not enough consumers know it operates across 70 markets and owns 250 different brands.

“There are way more brands in the Heineken company than Heineken alone. We want to make sure that we convey what the company is about compared to what the single brand is about,” he said.

“The company has been going through a huge transformation in the last decade. We have moved in the last 10 years of being very big and successful in Europe and North America to being globally present.”

“We thought now was the right moment to present ourselves as Heineken the company and not just the brand.”

Di Tondo wanted the campaign to be “as cool and slick” as its consumer-facing marketing activity. It also wanted to prove that “creativity goes beyond marketing”.

“Believe it or not, there’s a lot of creativity [that happens] in the supply chain or sales. When we talk about recruitment and HR, we needed to find a good way to disrupt it while also creating awareness. We know that a great piece of creativity travels beyond the money that you put behind it,” he said.

“Officially the project was managed by HR, but since day one they said they wanted to take a marketing approach. They needed the marketing team to help create something that the consumer would be willing to spend time on. It’s a five-minute long online interview, so it needed to be entertaining and dynamic.”

READ MORE: Failure to align marketing and HR causing brands to miss out on top talent

Bringing in new blood

Heineken has a relatively low staff turnover according to Di Tondo. And while this shows the company has an “excellent” culture, it is also a challenge as Heineken looks to innovate and stay ahead of competitors.

“It’s not unusual to sit in a meeting with people who have been working at the company for 18 years. We are growing in a company that has a strong culture, which as a result attracts the right kind of talent that finds itself at ease with our culture,” he explained.

“We run an annual climate survey, where we check the situation with our employees all around the world. What you see, possibly coming back generation after generation, is that the majority of respondents say they plan to work with us until retirement. This can become an issue, as you need a good turnover rate to get new blood in as well.”

 

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