Heineken are singing their way into a new #LiveYourMusic creative campaign in order to position themselves as the beverage of choice, within the live music sector.
Over the years the music industry has seen a number of brands promote and try to position themselves in the busy “live music” arena, so how will attaching the Heineken brand to this sector make them any different?
1) The strategy
Music festivals and outdoor events are becoming more and more popular with a wide range of people now travelling far and wide to listen to their favourite artist and simply be part of the live experience.
For Heineken they saw this as a great marketing tool to tie their brand to. Help them grow in different directions and reach out to a different target audience.
However, acknowledged by the music industry and Heineken, people now come to have the experience of the festival, “they come for the artist not the brand”.
2) The New #LiveYourMusic Campaign
This has not stopped Heineken however, who are launching a full global campaign with the hashtag “LiveyourMusic”, which was created in partnership with Publicis Worldwide.
The campaign will be fully supported with TV advertising, as well as new special bottle designs and new packaging, which according to Marketing Week are to fit in with the music direction the brand is taking.
Attaching your brand to anything whether this be a music event or even a person can have pros and cons. It can certainly raise your status, help you reach that hard to get target audience, but it can also fail. If the music event doesn’t sell, if the acts are poor, if there is a negative event at one of these festivals – all of a sudden your brand, your logo and your name are associated with all of these things.
Commenting in Marketing Week, Anuraag Trikha, Heineken’s global brand communication director, said “Music has almost become the beat of how Heineken communicates and touches people around the world. It’s also a great recruitment tool. When you want to get to the 25-year-olds around the world, music is the first place they go to and it allows you to be distinctive and credible, which is why we’re there,” he explained.
3) Brands and Music
For Heineken they don’t want to be seen as just another promotion or sponsor for yet another music event. They want it to be long lived and to mean something. All in all, they want their brand to be able to tell its own story at these events.
So by taking advantage of this new digital era, as part of their campaign they’re providing people at festivals with the opportunity to choose the next song in their new activation called “takeover”. According to Marketing Week through customised Heineken wristbands that can light up red or green and advanced camera technology, gig-goers can choose which song they want to hear next – the green or the red track. The chosen song will then automatically mix itself into the set.
Heineken like many brands want to build an emotional connection with their audience and with music their aim is to make them “feel” the music, whilst of course building their brand awareness.
4) Outcome
Heineken are still rolling this campaign out and we will see it in full swing come mid-summer. One thing is for sure, bringing technology into the equation and using this to the best of its ability will certainly make it more of a branding exercise rather than seen as a quirky marketing campaign.
Only time will tell whether the experience of Heineken at music events was simply an experience or whether the brand managed to create the relationship it was looking for between itself and the music industry.
References: Marketing Week
Picture from the Youtube video.
