ABOUT

Heineken have a long and successful history in rugby sponsorship and Activation. 2013/2014 saw the last season of the Heineken Cup in its current format before being renamed to the European Rugby Champions Cup [ERCC] for 2014/2015. However, Heineken did not relent in it’s determination to create a world-class campaign with engaging content.

The brief was to engage Heineken’s rugby audience in an entertaining way, highlighting the brand’s continued support of Europe’s premier club rugby
competition. With a crucial semi-final game for Ireland’s last remaining
team in the ERCC (Leinster), we wanted to increase
the profile of the brand and our sponsorship property through the clever use
of our social channels and audience. The resulting content should be highly
sharable and perfectly reflect the brand’s values and personality.

The concept was the simple use of a well-known Rugby legend who Irish fans knew and loathed as the catalyst of the campaign.

We released a teaser on Twitter which implied that we had ‘accidently’ leaked Neil Back’s personal mobile number. The response was phenomenal. Fans from around the country were outraged and reacted immediately and did not hold back when expressing themselves by leaving Neil voicemail messages and texts expressing their anger.

We wanted to challenge our followers to see if they could live up to the brand’s values and personality. By interrogating their ability to ‘Run With It’, we were testing their wit, resourcefulness and humour.

The end film would feature individuals that could live up to these values and would strike a chord with the wider target audience. Their cheeky personas were
admired and aspired toward and the audience could easily imagine themselves in the same situation. Much of the resulting online chatter saw followers call out their friends as people that were likely to ‘Run With It’. It was also a piece of content that people easily associated with Heineken, being from the same school as stunts of this nature.

We wanted to increase the profile of the brand and our sponsorship property through the clever use of our social channels and audience. The resulting content should be highly sharable and perfectly reflect the brand’s values and personality. We released a teaser on Twitter which implied that we had ‘accidently’ leaded Neil Back’s personal mobile number. The response was excellent. Fans from around the country reacted immediately leaving Neil voicemail messages expressing their anger.

We set up a fake press conference with Neil Back and lured fans who had called Neil and left insulting voicemails and texts. When the culprits arrived they were in for a shock. Thinking they were just there to collect tickets for the Leinster game the following Saturday, they were then brought into a fake press conference with Neil Back.