Keeping up the good work / Heineken has enjoyed impressive creative and business success as of late. It won 22 of the 46 Lions awarded to beer brands at Cannes Lions in 2024. In the same year, its brand value increased by 18% to $8.98bn, an impressive jump for such an established business.
In their Most Contagious talk, Friederike Offermanns, global communication manager for the Heineken Brand and Contagious advisory director James Womersley identified effective global-local dynamics to be one of the four key factors underpinning this prosperity. Heineken’s big wins are in part the result of long-term investment in brand-building initiatives that localise Heineken’s global tone of voice, they explained.
In Ireland, that commitment takes shape in supporting the country’s vibrant pub culture with campaigns like Pub Museums, which saw the brand help prevent pub closures by turning historic alehouses into museums so that they could be protected by National Cultural Heritage laws. Pub Succession is the brand’s latest localised brand building effort. It continues a winning strategy, reinforcing Heineken’s commitment to sustaining pub culture in Ireland while maintaining its global brand presence.
Find the new / If keeping brand consistency while finding local relevance wasn’t hard enough, brands also need to find fresh ways to express a long-held brand positioning.
Heineken has previously demonstrated its support to bar workers and its understanding of local industry challenges with recruitment campaign in the Netherlands in 2022. But this new effort is just different enough – shifting from a B2B focus to a consumer-friendly, PR-worthy story with a strong emotional pull. Rescuing a landmark third space cherished by the community is a more targeted, feel-good initiative than what the brand had done before.
It also doesn’t fall into the trap of being a gimmick as the brewer is offering real, practical support to the new pub owner, advocating for its long-term survival. This makes Pub Succession an important initiative that pays service to a cherished local institution, building brand love in a powerfully evocative pub market – and proving that brand consistency doesn’t mean just churning out the same ideas while doing so.
