The pandemic brought the on-trade to its knees, with devastating knock-on effects for the Heineken business. Our creative strategy helped turn a crisis into an opportunity. The lockdowns were changing people’s habits and bars were fading from people’s minds. We realized that bars needed visibility to survive the pandemic, as well as financial support. Hence Shutter Ads was born. We redirected our OOH budget to display ads on closed shutters, paying bars directly. Thus we invented a new media space that generated 299 million impressions for bars and Heineken alike.

The Covid-19 lockdowns brought the global hospitality business to on its knees, with devastating knock-on effects for the beer industry: 42% of beer volume sales were lost and an estimated €100 billion in revenue were wiped out (Statista, 2020).

Heineken is a global beer brand with a symbiotic relationship to the on-trade. As bars closed, beer volumes fell by 19.4% and net profits fell by a staggering 75.8% (Heineken NV, 2020).

Moreover, Nielsen (2020) predicted that brands that went dark during the pandemic would see their revenues slide a further 11%.

Whilst many brands cut spending, Heineken realised that communicating was crucial to surviving the pandemic.

We needed to keep the brand top of mind to ensure the brand could bounce back quickly - whilst being smart with our budgets.

Heineken’s crisis was nothing compared to the one faced by the wider hospitality sector.

Bars worldwide had been forced to shut. 860,000 bar and restaurant workers had lost their job in Europe alone. In some markets, experts predicted that a third of closed bars would never reopen.

These issues affected Heineken deeply.

Firstly because these were Heineken’s long-standing partners, with whom decades of trust and goodwill had been built.

Inaction at this crucial time would mean jeopardising years of partnerships, relationships and trust.

Secondly because Heineken’s recovery would only ever be as fast as the on-trade’s.

Our task was twofold:

1. Keep Heineken top of mind throughout the crisis.

2. Support bars and keep bar owners’ trust with the brand alive.

When brands don’t communicate, their equity wanes.

They start to die.

We thought…doesn’t this apply to bars too?

The longer the on-trade stayed closed, the more people would forget the bars they frequented pre-lockdown.

Bar owners also sensed the issue: they wondered whether their typical throng of customers would still remember to visit their usual haunts once it was safe to reopen.

Research confirmed the severity of the problem: 75% of people would emerge from the pandemic with different habits (McKinsey, 2020).

And with more options than ever to enjoy drinks at home, 60% of consumers were hesitant to return to bars post-lockdown (Ipsos Mori, 2020).

People’s habits were changing: they risked forgetting their local bars.

Unlike Heineken, small bar owners couldn’t rely on a marketing department to keep them relevant.

Heineken couldn’t just offer bars financial support.

It needed to help bars stay top of mind.

On average, 10% of Heineken’s media budget per market is dedicated to communicating via out-of-home.

But with the streets empty, the return on investment was nil. There was a sizable budget that currently had no purpose.

Meanwhile, closed shutters had become a staple of the press, a symbol of the pandemic that featured daily across news networks.

Ironically, bars that were desperate to be remembered were being advertised constantly as anonymous walls of gray.

Bars had inadvertently become a prime media space.

So what if we treated them like one?

Instead of paying for valueless billboards, we could pay bars to air our out-of-homes.

This way, bars would instantly become more visible and recognisable and Heineken would benefit from a more effective media channel.

We turned bar shutters into media spaces for our ads, redirecting €7.5 million of OOH budget to 5000 bars across 6 countries.

Over the period of a few weeks, the campaign was covered in 101 news outlets worldwide. Bars were being showcased in the international press.

Impressions of the campaign- and consequently the bars involved - totalled over 299 million, far surpassing those expected of a typical OOH campaign.

Shutter Ads inspired other brands in our portfolio - as well as our competitors! - to launch similar initiatives, helping even more bars.

Most importantly, every single bar involved in Shutter Ads survived.

Confidentiality agreements limit the commercial results we can share.

In Argentina, the campaign was a marked success.

Bars purchased 42% more hectolitres of Heineken than they had pre-pandemic.

854 more on-trade outlets chose to serve Heineken in 2021.

These results were clearly correlated with an increase in trust in Heineken: on-trade partners were 4.9% more satisfied with Heineken in 2021 versus 2019 (Madison 2021).