Lots of the world’s biggest brands have faced a “social media crisis” – whether it’s due to bad luck, ill-advised word choice, an errant employee or over-optimistic expectations. Brands are getting burnt; and famously. Because these stories go viral fast – have you seen the Fed Ex delivery guy throwing a TV delivery over a gate? Or #McStories? The United guitar song? US Airways?!? Or the HMV tweets?

This is a world where caution should be the maxim… But caution and creativity don’t go together well. The challenge was to educate without restraining or reducing the creativity of Heineken marketing.

The theme is Bold vs Crazy: challenging people to strive for Bold creativity, but to avoid the “Crazy” mistakes and mis-steps.

This was brought to life in a book, with a simple goal: it had to be creatively awesome enough that senior Heineken staff would keep it visible… thereby prompting everyone else to read the pdf copy online and engage with the wider training.

This was launched to all staff with posters featuring pop art depictions of that “OMG Moment” when something goes wrong. That moment when… and then made available within a new section of the staff portal.

Creating behaviour change in the company will take up to three years, but a post-launch poll showed that 96% of people were 'highly motivated to deploy' the new ways of working.

Right now, 49 copies of the book are in the hands of senior personnel. 'Bold vs Crazy' has become part of how Heineken talks about social ideas. The tools and advice in the book are already being adopted by Heineken¹s portfolio of brands in several markets.

The CMO even stole the first copy ­ before it was released. A good sign that it’s doing the job of grabbing attention.