Value enhancing, consumer-focused innovations are an essential ingredient for Heineken’s top-line growth. There is an innovation rate target of 6% by 2020. End of 2012, innovation was contributing €1 billion of revenues. That’s why we need big new ideas.

The Heineken Ignite project demonstrates Heineken’s passion to always progress, innovate and push the boundaries of brand and category. It’s an example of how technology will become more pervasive in key aspects of our business, and the importance of modern and contemporary design in continuously progressing and elevating the brand.

The hardest part of innovation isn't having an idea, it’s making it happen. Heineken recognized it needed to adopt lean start-up principles, and applied the ‘Spark’ process: a complete development path including prototyping in under 10 weeks.

Result: Heineken Ignite, aimed at creating a memorable Heineken experience, unlocking the power and possibilities of mobile innovation and technology. Requirement: go beyond the creation of just another mobile application, think beyond the screen and find a robust, simple and intuitive solution.

We, the creative agency, built a multi-disciplinary team together with Global Heineken Digital Team, MassiveMusic, Contagious Insider, C10, Global Heineken Design Team and independent experts from a wide range of industries.

Ignite, the world’s first smart beer bottle. It interacts with other bottles, its environment and the people around it, bringing together interaction, data and networking. It enriches natural behaviors in surprising ways and makes high tech feel fun, organic and seamless.

The bottle uses micro sensors and wireless networking to sense audience behaviors (drinking, cheersing, sitting idle). The motions trigger light effects illuminating the swirls of beer, carbon dioxide and oxygen. Besides that it can be remotely controlled by specially developed DJ/VJ software, syncing the network of bottles to the music and venue (lighting and screens). Each bottle is part of an ad-hoc network.

The housing under the bottle gives room to a custom designed circuit board based around the open source Arduino hard- and software platform. It features 8 bright LEDs, an efficient 8-bit microprocessor, an accelerometer to detect various motion types and a wireless network transceiver to communicate with the outside world. The 3D printed housing is consists of two parts, allowing re-use on multiple bottles of beer.

With the Heineken Ignite bottle, we have created the first smart bottle that blends human behavior and communication, club environment and interaction together with the iconic green Heineken bottle for a unique Heineken experience.

The interactive beer bottle is an example of Heineken’s commitment to using pioneering technology and design to create inventive new ways to experience the product and the brand. A limited number of 250 bottles were launched at the Milan Design Fair. This prototype launch provided Heineken the opportunity to learn from how the prototype would perform in a real life environment amongst an audience with high standards. Based on the success, Heineken are rolling Ignite out in nightclubs in 7 of their top 25 markets by the end of the year. Further evolution is also planned.

People instantly loved the Ignite bottles. No one needed an explanation, people immediately started playing with it, talking about it, interacting with their own and other people’s bottles and using the bottles to enhance their club night.

Heineken Ignite is a prototype and not a stunt, the film of the prototype launch (shot and edited the same night) was not promoted to public. The Tumblr blog with the production story for selected press was password protected, but received 3.500+ visitors and the videos on YouTube a collective count of 200,000 within a few days. The story went global and Heineken Ignite was featured on 300+ blogs including mainstream titles like CNBC, Engadget and Huffington post.

The launch in Milan was a huge success and provided Heineken with learnings on how the prototype would perform in a real life environment amongst an audience with high standards. The concept is being optimized based on these learnings and based on the success of the prototype launch, Heineken are now rolling it out in nightclubs in 7 of their top 25 markets before the end of the year. The 2.0 version of Ignite has also already been identified and being worked on for 2014.