In 2011, Heineken launched a responsible drinking campaign to encourage 25-year-old men to drink in moderation. From statistics we knew that they ignored campaigns that were warning of the negative consequences of excess alcohol.

The Challenge: We had to find a relevant consumer insight, to get young guys interested in moderate drinking.The Discovery: They are not worried about the dangerous consequences of excess alcohol, but what bothers them is to miss out on all the opportunities of the night when getting too drunk.The Objective: Heineken did not want to launch yet another responsible drinking campaign but wanted to initiate a moderate drinking conversation.

The Strategy: ‘Only moderate drinkers can enjoy the best opportunities of the night until the very end of it.’ The Execution: An integrated campaign that shows witty acts of moderation, promoting the opportunities of the night all the way to the end it, where sunrise is the only elimination ceremony.

Campaign Message: Sunrise belongs to moderate drinkers.The campaign was designed to create a social media conversation, using Heineken’s Facebook page as the hub for moderate drinking with cross feeds from Twitter, blogs and target related community sites like beatport and YouTube.The Outcome: After the campaign, social media conversations about responsible drinking related to Heineken’s campaign showed a significant increase.

The film was launched towards the end of 2011 in 27 markets worldwide for a total running time of 4 weeks. And on New Year’s Eve, it was projected to 1m people in Times Square, the biggest alcohol party of the year. That same night, the tailor made campaign track mysunrise was performed in a New York club, whilst posters and beer coasters were reminding people not to miss the best opportunities of the night. Here and in other clubs around the world, water bottles were given away for people to pace themselves. Heineken sofas in the most iconic sunrise spots worldwide were inviting people to tweet sunrise pictures using #mysunrise. All tweets have been displayed on Heineken’s Facebook page, the hub of the moderate drinking conversation. The content uploaded have been used to produce a music video for mysunrise, which was then played in clubs worldwide.

In 4 weeks:Responsible drinking conversations +20%.Heineken owned 74% of the global social media buzz on moderate drinking.Over 30,000,000 media impressions.3,000,000 online views.Effectiveness in promoting responsible drinking +10%.Brand credibility +20%.15,000 users viewed campaign PR online.