To engage our target on the launch of the new Heineken Silver, we created a virtual Silver and launched it on many different media so that people could experience the absurdity of a virtual drink at each step of the customer journey. Starting from a PR launch in a virtual brewery in Decentraland, the virtual beer was available on an AR app, oculus and as a snapchat filter. The new virtual Silver was launched like a real product with a social and influencer campaign, an OOH campaign and different activations on POS all across Europe.

Heineken had to launch a new light beer for a young target audience. And nowadays, all the brands trying to appeal to young people are jumping on the latest trend of the Metaverse. Because for many brands, the virtual world is a cool place to make people experience their product in a fresh way. But that is not true for every product and especially not for beer. Because the Metaverse is actually the only place where you can’t enjoy the refreshing taste of a real beer.

To demonstrate that the virtual world isn’t always better than the real one, we ironically jumped on the metaverse trend by launching the first virtual beer that you are not able to hold or drink or taste. The virtual beer was promoted as if it was a new beer that consumers could try for themselves. Only problem, once they interacted with the new virtual Silver in the metaverse, they had the realisation that they weren't able to taste it. Hence, we induced them the need and expectation to try the new beer for real.

For youth consumers across the globe there’s been a significant shift away from the beer world. So, to rejuvenate the brand, Heineken needed to connect with young consumers and launch its new beer with a Gen-z first campaign. But how could we connect with a younger audience when for them the coolest things around are virtual, while beer has always been a tool to connect people in real life? By showing that the metaverse is great for many things, but when it comes to socialising the real world is better.

In March we opened a virtual brewery in Decentraland and organised a virtual press event where people could virtually taste our virtual Silver. On Heineken.com we created a product page for people to download the AR version of our virtual beer, the Oculus one and the Snapchat filter. On social media and OOH, we launched a copyAd campaign to promote the absurdity of our undrinkable beer, together with three videos of avatars trying to try the virtual Heineken Silver. We brought the virtual beer on shelves, in bars and we even delivered it to people’s doors. Well, sort of. And after one month, when it was clear for everybody how silly a virtual drink was, we broke out of the metaverse and we launched the real Silver through a 3D OOH campaign and a series of Metabar parties,where the virtual world met the real one.The campaign travelled across 30+ markets.

This has been the biggest launch in the drink industry in Europe in the last decade:

After only one week, the Heineken Silver launch was already the most successful launch in Heineken’s history. With 266K+ social interaction and 1350+ hours spent in front of a virtual beer. The campaign got 2K+ press mentions across the globe and 1.7B+ impressions.

We reached 30+ countries, even 13 where we didn’t actually launch. And as a result, the campaign generated a 172% increase in purchase interest.