Heineken’s 150th anniversary campaign challenged how anniversaries are supposed to be celebrated. Because, you know, nobody really cares about them. So to make them relevant, Heineken leveraged the common mistakes made with its brand name as a celebration of its global presence and cultural integration, turning a negative into a successful branding strategy.

2023 marked an important milestone in Heineken’s history: the brand's 150th anniversary. The perfect time to remind people of our history, celebrate our legacy and talk about the quality of our products. But Heineken is not in the beer business: it's in the business of good times. So when we discovered that people all over the world mistreated our brand by misspelling it, misusing it and mispronouncing it... we decided to celebrate our anniversary by giving people exactly what they wanted: 150 years of good times. One way or another.

Being around for over 150 years and present in 192 countries makes Heineken one of the most popular beer brands in the world. Unfortunately, it also makes it the most misspelled beer brand in the world. With millions of people all over the planet constantly mistreating our brand by mispronouncing, misspelling, and misusing Heineken we not only demonstrated cultural sensitivity and adaptability but also transformed what could be perceived as mere errors into a grand celebration of diversity.

2023 marked an important milestone in Heineken’s history: the brand's 150th anniversary. The perfect time to remind people of our history, celebrate our legacy and talk about the quality of our products, right? Nope. GenZ told us clearly: they couldn’t care less about brand anniversaries. And, telling them how OLD Heineken was, wasn’t exactly going to win them over. So we needed to find a different way to leverage this event and get them to care about our brand.

Heineken has been around for 150 years. So surely everyone in the world knows us by now, right? Nope. People still think Heineken is German. And nobody can spell our name. In fact, data showed us that Heineken is the most misspelled beer brand in the world. But guess what, those are not setbacks but proof of the brand's widespread enjoyment across cultures. Afterall as our founder once said, we are in the business of good times. So instead of fighting these mistakes, we decided to celebrate them. Globally. And this shift in perspective was pivotal, turning potential negatives into a unique selling proposition, so successful that the campaign will run for another year.

Data shows that Heineken is misspelled and mispronounced in so many different ways all over the world, so to celebrate Heineken 150th anniversary, Heineken stopped being Heineken for a full year by changing its brand into all the misspells, mispronunciations and misuses coming from people, to encourage everyone to enjoy a Heineken in their own way. In other words: 150 years of good times - One way or another.

Even though our lawyers really advised against it, stop being Heineken for a full year was a great business decision, since people loved it so much that sales went up 32%,

brand recall skyrocketed up to +354% and the anniversary campaign became the most successful global PR launch date. So much so that the brand has decided to keep it running for another year.

The campaign was designed to feel global but to be locally relevant. We turned every local mistake into an activation and every misspelling/mispronunciation into real Heineken bottles. In Mexico, we encouraged locals to mix Heineken into “Michelada’s”. In Italy, we launched a collab with MGSM celebrating how Italians pronounce Heineken” “Aineken”. We developed ice cubes made out of Heineken - to cool the beer without watering it down (since ice in beer is common in Vietnam) Renamed our brand “Prasini” - the green one - the local name for Heineken in Greece. And many, many, many more.