Cannes Lions

Out-of-Home Matches

LEPUB, Sao Paulo / HEINEKEN / 2024

Awards:

1 Silver Cannes Lions
1 Shortlisted Cannes Lions
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Overview

Entries

Credits

OVERVIEW

Background

While UCL games have huge audiences, bringing crowds to bars, UWCL struggles for airtime on Brazilian TV channels.

How could people cheer for the Women's Champions League if they don't even have a place to watch it?

If the games aren't broadcast, no one watches or gets involved, and investing in them may not seem profitable. This creates a vicious cycle where potential fans never have the opportunity to engage with the sport.

As a proud sponsor of UWCL, Heineken aimed to change this by doing what we have been doing for 150 years: inviting people to refresh their perspectives.

Idea

With no place to watch the UWCL matches, it was time for Heineken to step onto the field and do what no other beer brand has done before.

The opportunity: fortunately a big chunk of Heineken’s media budget is directed to something that can help with this.

Heineken presents Out of Home Matches - turning Heineken's media budget into visibility for the UEFA Women's Champions League.

We turned OOHs into giant TV screens to broadcast UWCL matches, to leverage Brazilians' behavior, changing their focus to what matters: women's football.

Every major Brazilian city hosted live UWCL events, and the entire country watched a tournament they had never seen before.

But a media flight won't last forever, so Heineken took a few extra steps: from partnering with DAZN to stream the UWCL for free to create a unique trading program to encourage bars to also broadcast the matches.

Strategy

To boost the UWCL's viewership we took advantage of a very typical Brazilian behavior.

The truth: in Brazil, football fans just can't resist peeking at a screen with a match on. Literally, any screen.

If there's football on, there will be a Brazilian watching.

The problem: when it comes to the UWCL, there simply isn't any screen for them to peek at.

The Insight: What if Heineken put these games where people pass by everyday so they could take a look at them?

Execution

Heineken redefined an important media channel for awareness, Out-of-Home by shifting its investment from UCL to UWCL.

But not any shift. A shift that turned this media into entertainment for Brazilians.

We mapped over 3,500 high-traffic OOHs, and these spots broadcast matches in 13 cities.

To bring bars to the game, these billboards also gave them free advertising, showing people the nearest partner bar so they could watch the UWCL with a Heineken discount coupon.

And on top of it all, our OOHs also invited people to join DAZN, where they could watch the entire championship anywhere. For free.

Yes, we scored against the women's football visibility barrier. If people didn't have the chance to engage with it before, now anyone could have a peek at a UWCL match and then watch it with a Heineken at home or in a bar just across the street.

Outcome

By repurposing its media budget, Heineken changed the game for UWCL in Brazil.

The Out-Of-Home Match reached over 25 million people and garnered 47.2 million impressions. Everybody celebrated how we put UWCL on the spotlight, reaching $52M in Earned Media.

We established a new social occasion, showing that enjoying the UWCL with a Heineken is a perfect match. The score? DAZN received +35% traffic, +280 bars began streaming the championship after our trade program, increasing our sales by 72% during the matches.

But, there was also a game-changer result for women's football: major media outlets noticed the demand for their matches. For the first time in over 20 years, TNT, a TV channel that broadcasts the UCL, began airing the UWCL in Brazil.

Once again Heineken brought new perspectives to set trends in the category, increasing its differentiation by 15 percentage points and reinforcing its leadership in Kantar's attribute.

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