ABOUT

As named sponsors for the Rugby World Cup 2015 Heineken gave Irish consumers the opportunity to travel to the tournament to toss the coin between captains at the games - All with the Help of some Rugby legends!!

The Rugby World Cup is one of the biggest sporting events in the world. Coming around once every four years meant that Heineken needed to ensure they had stand out and both global and local presence with their campaign for the 2015 tournament.

As a named sponsor it was crucial Heineken be considered the name when consumers thought of rugby as the brand already had a long establishment with rugby trough their sponsorship of both the Champions and The Challenge cup.

The insight came from a very simple opportunity Heineken had at their helm - being a named sponsor Heineken had access to not one but two money can't buy opportunities. They had access to the William Webb Ellis trophy the prestigious cup the winner of the World Cup would hold and raise, and a truly outstanding opportunity for any rugby fan - the opportunity to toss the coin between two Captains at a numbers of rugby World Cup games during the tournament.

With these two out of the world assets at their helm the global creative idea was born. The Rugby World Cup 2015 campaign told consumers "It's Your Call ". Global out of home and a TV campaign featuring Jonah Lomu and John Smit introduced audiences to this new campaign which gave consumers the opportunity of a lifetime.

Heineken global developed global rugby ambassadors for the 2015 tournament including Shane Horgan, Rocky Epsom and All Blacks legend Johah Lomu. These were made available to Heineken Ireland to use in order to connect with Irish audiences further.

Heineken Ireland's job was to make this global campaign further resonate with Irish audiences and engage them in a way no other brand would.

Heineken Ireland developed an idea that would bring punters out of their ordinary set up in a pub and surprise them with something they would be truly astonished by.

On a Sunday in May we set up what we called "The Lomu Machine ". In a pub in Dublin we developed a human size box (one big enough to fit the all blacks legend) and inserted a digital game into it.

As punters approached the box they were asked a simple question in order to win merchandise. When they answered merchandise was then dispensed from the box. What perplexed the punters was each piece of merchandise was individually personalized further leaving them astonished.

After some time when the crowd began to get confused how Heineken were producing personalized merchandise - we revealed all. Enter Shane Horgan ready to take over from Lomu and commence his ‘shift’ in the box. Punters went crazy and could not believe their eyes when one of the all time best players was in the box the whole time

The video was released on all Heineken social channels to outstanding results coming from all over the world. Irish Rugby legend Brian O’Driscoll even gave it his sign of approval on his personal Twitter.

This video set up the local campaign which then saw the ‘Lomu machine’ unfortunately without the legend himself travel all over the country to pubs.

Punters would have the opportunity to win merchandise by buying a pint of Heineken in exchange for a limited edition Heineken coin developed especially to toss at the 2015 rugby World Cup tournament.

Some lucky winners in trade were also awarded with tickets to games and some with the opportunity to flip the coin. The TVC also had a local end frame further pointing consumers to pick up their coin in participating bars to be in with a chance to flip the coin.

Our final winners traveling to the UK to toss the coin would come from the weekly pundit TV3 show developed for the tournament. Each week an audience member who had won their spot in the audience from the trade would be given the opportunity to travel to one of the World Cup games to flip the coin.

An always on fully reactive social campaign further demonstrated our presence of being the biggest named sponsor of the tournament. When ant reactive events happened we were on stand by ready to react on social in order to ensure we were top of consumers minds when they heard the latest tournament news.

Each weekend during the tournament we had the Heineken Legends on twitter answering Irish punters questions and commentating throughout the games.