HEINEKEN:
Looking back to go forward
By Enmanuel Vargas
On Wednesday September
28th, at the Bing Stage during the 2016 Advertising Week took place
the conference “Looking back to go Forward” by Ralph Rijks, the Heineken USA
Senior Vice president of Marketing. Rijks is an expert and have occupied
supervision and management positions across different roles as regional and
local coordination of marketing in retail stores, brand activation and
others scenarios which have brought him the knowledge and the expertise needed
to apply it in national’s markets as he is doing now in the VP level of
Heineken US. He has been working as Brand Manager and as a Regional Marketing
Manager for the Heineken brand and also for others beverage and food brands as
PepsiCo and Jacobs Douwe Egberts.
Usually, we see brands
positioned in such as great place in the consumer’s mind at worldwide level but
we don’t imagine how many years and how big has been the marketing effort to
accomplish it. This apply for the well-known beer brand; Heineken as Ralph
Rijks explained in his 45 minutes’ presentation for the Advertising Week 2016
last week. It is incredible how this beer made exclusively of three natural
ingredients have been successfully managed by the same family for 143 years.
The Heineken Brand was
founded in Amsterdam in 1873. The brand positioning has been “the beer for attractive
people, for those with peculiar lifestyle and for those who are jumping around
having exiting moments.” It was the first beer imported to France and the first
international beer to be shipped to US and believe it or not it hasn’t been
easy task to deal with this Market, and more strong has been to deal with the
demanding millennial consumer.
Ralph was very clear
that decades of hard work have guaranty the success for this brand. In the
company the brand lives and the quality of the final product really matters,
especially if the target are millennials. It’s a big task to have the same
taste and positioning everywhere in the world. In some places Heineken is more
expensive than other brands, but the idea is that “You may pay more for a
Heineken because you will find a lot of great experience and lifestyle in a
bottle than anywhere else” Ralph said.
Any brand has to be much
more than just a product; it has to represent something big. In this case
Heineken have been representing that connection symbol, great meetings after
work and family special events for consumers since ever. “Heineken was the
first social network in the world. It has been connecting people since 1873”
Heineken USA SVP. It’s about share with those who you appreciate, it’s about
people.
There are some issues
that can affect the brand globally. Factors as the weather, shipping,
intermediaries, the retail store and others may change the way how the product
tastes. “We have to be the same brand around the world otherwise there is not
brand future” Ralph explained. It has to be more than just the same
product, but the same position, the same purpose wherever the brand is placed.
I think that it depends on the nation, there are some elements that will be
different in reference to communications as the language and the cultural part.
Others brand elements as colors, the meaning, the tone of voice have to remain
the same in order to have the same identity.
In the evaluation of the
campaign “There’s more behind the star”, consumers
are invited to discover the authentic product stories and the essence of this
World Wide brand in a group of films with the celebrity Benicio del Toro. This
campaign increased market shares by 2% in US said Ralph Rijks. In this case,
the strategy was different from others Ad campaigns that Heineken have launched
in which fun moments, sport and people connections were the principal
characters. This time the objective was to revitalize the brand and to present
to the consumers what is inside the bottle that make it special.
“The right celebrity is
the one with better numbers after we ask our consumers, or at least the one who
represent the brand identity the most” explained the Heineken Marketing SVP.
Selecting a celebrity cannot be only about feelings, everything has to be
evaluated with the final consumers before be live because who better than them
to determinate if the celebrity match with the brand.
Takeaways:
- Actually, big companies prefer in Senior positions
those who know the brand from lower roles, those who really understand
the micro factors (Retail stores, brand activation, distribution
strategies, etc. as Ralph Rijks did before get into the Vice President
position.
- Everything have to be evaluated before be launched to
the final target audience.
- American Millennials are one of the most difficult
market to deal with. They are very quality demanding, well informed and
have a lot of different options to select from.
- The Brand have to be globally integrated with the same product quality, same tone of voice, same colors and forms, same culture and philosophy in order to be respect whenever it goes.
Speaker: Ralph Rijks, SVP of Marketing Heineken USA
Campaign: “There’s more behind the star.”
Client: Heineken
Agency: Publicis Worldwide
Celebrity: Benicio del Toro
