#ChampionTheMatch is a global campaign for a global audience. This automatically places limitations on the level of storytelling with dialogue that you can produce. Stories must be easy to follow even for non-native English speakers. And since most of the content is viewed through Twitter, content must be respectful to the attention span of our viewers who are also watching the football games; Therefore content is kept to snack-size portions… Different regions have differences in the way they consume online media, which makes it important to have a variety of content in many forms from films to photos to text-based tweets; ensuring everyone around the world can engage in the best possible way.

Different regions also have different rules regarding the portrayal and presentation of Alcohol,

This posed some interesting challenges for Heineken as a beer brand. On various occasions several versions of the content are created to appease local regulations and respect cultural differences.

Heineken’s #ChampionTheMatch is a social marketing campaign aimed at a global audience of football fans with the intention of creating brand preference for the Heineken brand and product around UEFA Champions League games. The 3D-printable pack is a physical direct mailing delivered through the internet and made a tangible asset of the campaign available to millions of fans around the world. We posted a link to an open source file platform containing the download files of the 3D-printable documents on Heineken’s #ChampionTheMatch Twitter page during Champions League matches, coinciding with the key moments in Heineken’s branded content campaign on Twitter in order to attain maximum reach for the link and message. Once printed, the bespoke bottle opener, ice bucket and beer coaster were fully functional for fans to enjoy. The 3D-printable pack will continue to be made available for the duration of the 2015 UEFA Champions League.

So far, all #ChampionTheMatch online activity generated over 1.4 billion media impressions, with video content being viewed 47.5 million times.

#ChampionTheMatch is the biggest conversation driver among other official UEFA Champions League sponsors, owning almost 75% share of voice. In total #ChampionTheMatch generated over 120.000 unique tweets from users engaging with the football legend.

And the content served its purpose. Research showed that pre-match purchase intent among Heineken’s target audience exposed to #ChampionTheMatch was up 62%. In addition, 52% of respondents stated that seeing our content made them feel that preparing for the match was more important.