A pandemic. The great resignation. An energy crisis. Inflation.

The past four years have been a period of relentless crisis for the world, for small business owners, and particularly for bars.

Costs have been rising, it’s been harder to recruit people and margins have been squeezed. Many bars even closed, never to reopen.

But this wasn’t just a crisis for bars - it was also a crisis for Heineken, who depends on bars.

We created “Back the bars” - a communications platform to help keep bars open.

We tackled everything from the Covid Lockdowns to Antivaxxers boycotting bars, from staff shortages to inflation.

Our campaign ran in 15 different markets in total, spanning a total of 11,000 bars in need.

Some were international operations - like Shutter Ads - others more localised to a single issue.

But they all sent a clear message to other bars: we have your back.

We realised our challenge was actually a marketing problem disguised as a supply chain problem.

In these times of crisis, we needed to maintain bars’ trust and preference for Heineken.

But we couldn’t just do this by talking.

We needed to do something to help.

So we repurposed a marketing budget into a budget to support bars.

Whatever problems they faced, we would be there to help.

We then turned it into a communications platform to rebuild our relationship with bar owners.

Each initiative relied heavily on a close partnership with bar owners to ensure successful execution.

In 2021, Heineken leveraged bar shutters as media spaces, redirecting €157k of our OOH budget to benefit 725 bars across 4 countries.

In 2022, 1000 bars in Argentina and Brazil received more than €800K from Heineken that leveraged bad reviews from anti-vaxxers, transforming them into ads that endorsed these bars as safe and welcoming places to socialize.

In 2023, Heineken focused on hiring staff with bar experience, starting with 300 bars in the Netherlands and Ireland.

In 2023, Heineken also donated €5.8 million to convert billboards into solar panels. The energy generated from these panels then powered the refrigeration systems in 3,550 bars across Brazil.

Recognizing the historical significance of certain Irish pubs, we partnered with them in 2024 to secure museum status. This reclassification allows them to benefit from government subsidies.

It was 4 years of win-win-win.

It was a win for bars:

Heineken invested over €6.8 Million in 4 years to help save bars.

More than 5500 bars were involved… and saved.

A win for our brand:

Our platform earned 264 million PR impressions for our brand - mainly in trade magazines and specialty publications.

This grew bars’ trust in Heineken, which grew 13.9% from 2020.

A win for sales:

In participating markets, 13.3% more bars chose to stock Heineken in 2023 than they did in 2019.

Moreover, those bars bought more Heineken - our on-trade sell-out volumes grew by 6.95% (despite inflation and rising costs).