In 2010 Heineken became the main sponsor of Flow Festival in Helsinki. Flow is an established get together of 50,000 hipsters that are very allergic to all sponsorship and branding. Our goal was to come up with something that would make it to the official program of Flow. We created Tastebuddies. The idea was: Lock two designers from very different backgrounds inside a container. Give them a visual brief...and 30 minutes to invent a new product. The ideas would be illustrated live on stage by Parra, a well known Dutch illustrator.

Parra had to illustrate what the designers came up with: A snowmobile / bicycle called the Bi-tractor; a female-symbol-shaped fan called The Family Hot Fan and a really big piece of cutlery for the broken hearted by the name Eat Me Sad. We made it to the festival programme. Did we even see a birth of new design classic? Maybe not. But the Finnish hipsters seemed to have a great time and engaged with the brand. From a single event, we produced a new kind of campaign and got tons of the right kind of attention for the brand in Finland.

The event idea made the foundation for Heineken campaign. Before the event, there were radio interviews of the designers, a widely distributed Tastebuddies fanzine, a blog and a Facebook event. At the festival, the container was placed next to the main stage. We built a bar in front of it so people could sip beer, sit on sofas and see the designers in action inside the container. At the event, we had a multi-camera broadcast unit that shot footage for screens in the area and material for online documentaries. After the event, the documentaries were posted on the Tastebuddies blog and on YouTube.