The Covid-19 pandemic had fostered the creation of misinformation, distrust and divisions in society - manifested particularly by the antivaxxer movement.

This small but incredibly loud group of people had created skepticism and doubt over the Covid vaccine, which 4 in 10 young people were ready to reject.

As a brand that stands for openmindedness in social life, we needed a strategy to convince young people to take the vaccine and end the divisions brought about by the pandemic.

“The Night is Young” convinced 64% of young people who saw it to get vaccinated.

Heineken has been social networking since 1873.

For over 150 years, the brand has been promoting open-mindedness and fresh connections by encouraging people to get together over a beer.

That is, until Covid-19.

When the very social experiences we had been encouraging and  empowering for over a century became deadly.

For the first time in history we had to encourage people to socialize responsibly.

Either safely, or not at all.

By mid-2021, hope was finally on the horizon.

The Covid-19 vaccine had already entered large-scale production and was becoming available for everyone.

Young people, whose social lives had been devastated by the lockdowns, could finally look forward to going out again.

But according to Morning Consult (2021), around around 1 in 4 Gen Zs and Millennials said they wouldn’t get vaccinated.

And the slower the vaccine rollout, the longer it would take for everyone’s social life to fully recover.

As a brand that stands for social life, Heineken needed to encourage young people to get vaccinated.

Between 8 to 10% of people refusing the vaccine were die-hard antivaxxers who believed the vaccine to be harmful. Changing their mind would be almost impossible.

But the rest were just people who were just hesitant about the vaccine and its possible side-effects.

They too looked forward to the return of social life - but they’d either spoken to anti-vaxxers or been influenced by popular skeptics like Joe Rogan. 

We discovered that the elderly were already out there living the social life that young people dreamed of returning to.

So to encourage young people to get vaccinated, we decided to show how older people were enjoying the social life they were missing.

Reassuring them that the vaccine was indeed safe.

And creating a bit of envy to push them to take it.

Heineken created “The Night is Young”.

A campaign that celebrated the newfound nightlife of the young old and carefree to encourage Gen Z and Millennials to get vaccinated.

Our message: “The night belongs to the vaccinated.”

Knowing that our audience would likely be watching from home, we designed an ecosystem designed to maximise the PR effect of the campaign.

An online video, launched on Youtube and our social channels, where we the epic parties that the elderly were already enjoying. 

An OOH campaign in key locations that would draw attention.

Select events to which we invited older influencers and the already vaccinated.

The antivaxxers came out in full force, turning #BoycottHeineken into a trending topic in the UK. 

But we held fast: testing showed that 86.5% of people agreed with our message. 

And it resonated with them, achieving a “Meaningfulness” score of 98/100 (Kantar, 2021).

In the end, the antivaxxers’ outrage inadvertently helped our campaign attract international attention.

Our ad appeared in talk shows from Argentina to Australia, generating enormous PR media coverage.

Level-headed people came to the comments to debate and dispel the misinformation.

The Australian, South African and Dutch governments all wrote us letters of support.

Ultimately, only 40% of the 72K social engagements the campaign earned were negative.

And despite a relatively shoestring media budget, “The Night is Young” went on to earn 824M media impressions.

Most importantly, 64% of young people who saw the campaign said they would get vaccinated.