Heineken Social Media Marketing Research Assignment (Essay Sample)

HEINEKEN SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
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Heineken Social Media Marketing
Introduction
Heineken is one of the leading international brewers with its headquarters in Amsterdam Netherlands. The company is committed to remaining active and independent which has led to the company being the most valuable global premium brand of beer (Mark 2015). Apart from the Heineken brand, the company has over 170 specialty beers targeted at satisfying the varying customer needs in the entire globe. The company which is family controlled uses an excellent branding strategy for it to remain internationally competitive while at the same time stay relevant to their target market’s origins and personal cultures (Mark 2015). The paper will focus on Heineken’s YouTube advertisement on ‘Worlds Apart’ experiment.
Social Media at Heineken
Heineken presented a Worlds Apart Experiment where they needed to assess whether two strangers with divergent views have more that unites them than what divides them. It involves two strangers, alienated by their beliefs, converge for the first time. None of the parties have an idea of what the experiment is about and know nothing regarding each other. The aim is to find out if there’s more that unites us than divide us (“Heineken / Worlds Apart / #OPenYourWorld” 2017). The video uploaded about a year ago has close to 15 million views and about five thousand reviews. Most of the reviews are positive comments by passionate fans of Heineken brand especially after the end of the experiment where the two people with opposing opinions sit down and discuss their differences as they drink a bottle of Heineken.
The extensive customer reviews for the video is as a result of the fans posting and reposting the same on their timelines (Alves, Fernandes and Raposo 2016). Over 251,000 fans have subscribed to the Heineken channel for them to access similar videos that get published in the future effortlessly. The subscription has enhanced brand loyalty form the Heineken supporters. When at the end of the experiment the parties draw each a bottle of Heineken, the viewer especially the beer lover’s experience a mouth-watering (“Heineken / Worlds Apart / #OPenYourWorld” 2017). However, some people gave negative reviews citing the ad was staged, but the issue got addressed by Heineken on Twitter and indicated that the ad features real stories. For instance, one person was spotted saying it is an unpopular opinion and felt guilty about the advertisement stating that a bottle of beer would not bring change to a ‘neo-nazi and a transphobe.’
The video has experienced recreations and broadcast ads, for instance, it experienced an explosion of interest in the brand on YouTube. Media outlets frame the advertisement as a success where competitors have failed and say that Heineken takes on people’s differences and nails it. The video has been reposted on other social media platforms under superlative headlines (Hunt 2018). Heineken has started auto-play ads on the Facebook campaign which targets the over 1.2 billion users. The videos attract millions of followers from all over the wo...