Heineken
Seeking growth beyond beer
Even since Gerard Heineken invented a new, product-defining yeast in 1886, innovation has been at the heart of the brand. Whilst their beer is known and loved far and wide, with the rise of craft and a younger generation turning away from alcohol, Heineken needed to look beyond their traditional offering to power future growth.
Spanning 2 projects, we worked closely with marketing and product innovation leads to identify ownable whitespace. Building on cultural and category research, we conducted deep co-creation sessions at drinking locations with hyper-focused trade, brewing and consumer groups to create fresh and authentic concepts.
This partnership has delivered multiple new business opportunities for the group, including category-disrupting product ideas set to launch in 2022, a beer subscription service and direct, in-bar training – the latter of which resulted in our joint venture Hello Beer.
UPSIDE
New business models launched and implemented
FIELD NOTE
Rethink the audience
So often people fixate on the end consumer, but there are other starting points to innovation. Targeting brewers and trade gave us new ways in and opportunities beyond B2C.