The brief was to mark the epic moment of Heineken turning 150 years old, by getting everyone around the world to celebrate Heineken, while enjoying a Heineken.

But instead of doing this, we did quite the opposite of a classic anniversary campaign. We didn’t talk about our heritage and history. Instead, we celebrated how our brand has been enjoyed around the world for 150 years, even if that means that we have been misspelled, misused or mistaken for a German beer since 1873. That’s right. People all over the world have been enjoying Heineken in ways that might annoy some marketing executives. But not ours.

So in the end, instead of criticizing people’s mistakes, we were happy they were having a good time with us.

Everyone should know Heineken by now. But guess what, people don’t really know Heineken. For the past 150 years, they have been misspelling our brand, mistaking it for a German beer, calling it Hineken, Haneken, or Heneken, drinking our beer with a straw, just to name a few.

Our film celebrated Heineken turning 150 years old and was based on true stories, getting inspired by the most famous mistakes and misspellings from around the world: from a guy getting a misspelled Hineken tattoo, to a girl ordering a Heineken in a wrong way that made life hard for the bartenders, or a guy who was losing everything in a game show because of an honest mistake: he was sure Heineken was German. Close enough.

Our film received an overwhelmingly positive response, getting four times more mentions than another Heineken film launched this year, earning us a total of 3.3billion impressions and 3k mentions across online news or social media so far. News outlets kept picking up the campaign across the globe, being as relevant in Brazil as in Nigeria. With a 98% positive response, the film was well-liked by viewers. Social conversation indicated to us that they easily related to the film insights, which were inspired by real consumer behaviors from different markets.