Heineken wanted to build a relationship with Gen Z’s and help them spark new connections in their social circles. In todays polarized world we live, people feel even more isolated and the apps and their algorithms were trapping them in further bubbles.

The apps that were built to help you connect with people are now turning against you and trapping you in algorithms that does not help you truly connect with each other. Specially the music platforms today don’t help you understand and connect with each other through the music you love. It closes you off from new experiences that you are meant to have

The challenge to be addressed was therefore: How do we get Malaysian Gen-Z’s to break out of their algorithmic bubbles by creating new possibilities and bringing music fans together? Through a uniquely Heineken way – music.

To refresh Heineken’s role in the music space, Heineken partnered with Spotify to create “The Heineken Playlist Refresher” - a simple web-app that allowed you to connect with a friend, loved one or even acquaintance and share your usual playlist with them. The catch was, they would discover your “type” of music while you listened to theirs.

Whilst Spotify already had a feature that was called “BLEND” it trapped people back in to an algorithm that told them what kind of music to listen to. The playlist refresher helped you have a human connection and explore music together.

Many Gen-Z in Malaysia were dealing with issues of loneliness, with 70% of Gen Zs claiming that audio helped them feel less alone. Many hoped to be understood through their music with 69% agreeing that audio acts as a soundtrack to their lives.

Face to face interviews confirmed that they rarely shared their musical tastes due to fear of judgement from their friends.

The strategy was then to create “Musical Connections without Messy Conversations” - Heineken aimed to empower consumers and create new connections through music by creating safeguards that remove awkward social judgements inherent in the exchange of different musical interests.

KOLS, social media and partner content sites creatively provoked Malaysians to break out of their everyday music bubbles.

Malaysians who responded to the CTA were led to Heineken’s Playlist Refresher microsite where users could connect through their Spotify account . They are then prompted to forward a link to someone they wished to connect with. The AI then analysed their musical interests and generates a combined shared playlist that can be played on the microsite or Spotify itself.

Heineken’s Playlist Refresher allowed Malaysians to share a meaningful connection with each other, appreciate new music, all without the fear of judgement.

The campaign was a hit amongst the Gen Zs of Malaysia - achieving a reach of over 7,000,000 and 35.4mil impressions, with an impressive frequency of 5.01.

There were a total of 68,071 unique visits to the campaign webapp (microsite), over 1,300 unique playlists registered, created and shared, while the influencers performed correspondingly well, bringing in 191,673 impressions and reaching an total audience of 190,820

The campaign’s Social media posts achieved 9.69% 3s View-through-Rate (vs 5% benchmark), while Video completion % in each segment performed brilliantly at approximately 85% (vs 16% benchmark).