So many verses were submitted that the 3-minute song ended up lasting 15 hours and 14 minutes.

During Christmas season, Heineken had the highest advertising campaign recall and achieved the highest top-of-mind awareness compared to its 2 closest competitors combined (whose media investment was 5 times higher).

The campaign not only increased Heineken’s Brand Likeability Index to a record high of 75%, it also became the brand most associated with Puerto Rican Christmas.

As the song became synonymous with the brand, each time it played during the 6 weeks of the campaign added up to over $230,000 in free publicity.

The team contacted José Feliciano, the famous singer-songwriter of “Feliz Navidad” (Merry Christmas), to serve as a spokesperson throughout the entire campaign.

A TV spot featured the singer asking people to add a new verse to his song.

Through Facebook and an IVR phone service, people could write and record their own verses.

Each week, the best ones were made into radio spots to motivate people to keep adding verses. José Feliciano himself sang all of his favorite submitted verses on YouTube.

To hear how the extended song was coming along, people could play it online or visit Heineken’s Musical Christmas Tree at Plaza Las Américas, the biggest mall in the Caribbean.

At the end, José Feliciano rerecorded “Feliz Navidad” with the winning verses for Heineken. It was launched through national radio.

Christmas is Puerto Rico’s favorite season. Because of its many local traditions and celebrations, their Christmas is the longest in the world. (59 days)

Naturally, Christmas is a very competitive season for beer brands. Sales reach their highest peaks during November, December, and January.

Heineken had to find a way to create a campaign to stand out and truly connect with Puerto Ricans during Christmas. In Puerto Rico, Christmas is music. And its most famous Christmas song also happens to be the shortest Christmas song in the world: “Feliz Navidad”. It only has one verse. That’s it.

The campaign gave Puerto Ricans the chance to extend their classic, short song until it did justice to their particularly long Christmas.