From 2013 to 2016, the premium beer options for Brazilian consumers went from 41 to 74 brands, with a media investment increase of 28% for the segment. Additionally, during that period, our competitors were reducing price to increase sales, and the difference between Heineken’s price to other competitors increased, in average, from 5% to almost 30% (more expensive).

While other players were lowering their prices to obtain higher sales, even if had cost them a decrease in brand value, Heineken chose the opposite and generated even more value to the brand. That strategy meant to stay true to the brand’s DNA: go in the opposite direction of the category’s clichés, like objectify women in ads.

The campaign objectives brought faced many challenges. The first was to keep the brand’s perception as a prestigious beer in the premium beer segment, so Heineken wouldn’t lose any consumer to other low cost beers. In order to do so, we had to create a high impact campaign that could create an emotional connection between our audience, to drive our brand away from the pricing issue and justify it with a prestigious brand perception.

Therefore, the campaign objectives should answer directly to the challenge: first, maintain the brand’s perceived value attributes and its prestigious position in the premium beer segment. On the short term, we needed to create a quick identification with consumers to avoid losing them to lower price competitors, and maintain the consumer’s perception of the value of holding a Heineken.

The agency’s greatest challenge was to develop a high impact campaign that could elevate the level of conversation about beers, driving our brand away from the price war and maintaining its progressiveness perception.

In a business perspective those indexes should impact positively the results comparing to 2Q2015:

-10% growth on the brand’s regular users index on the brand pyramid;

-Increase penetration in new residences by 10%;

Those goals were considered quite aggressive, since in 2Q2015 we were present in 1.137.837 Brazilian homes, a number 15% higher year-over-year. Therefore, we needed to achieve a double-digit growth to compare to a very good previous year.

Besides, we had the specific goal to keep the decrease of value share as low as possible due to the competitors’ price war.

To address a high impact and visibility strategy in midst of such a complex scenario, we decided to use one of the brand’s most powerful assets: the UEFA Champions League Final. This platform holds high global prestige. One of the brand’s greatest strongholds is one of the brand’s tradition, because it’s highly associated with consumption and a moment when consumers are always expecting a brilliant idea from the brand.

We decided that this was an opportunity to break all category clichés and launched a campaign that used soccer as a tool to break stereotypes and promote gender equality.