Working with Heineken Ireland over the past 7 years has given us at McCann plenty of opportunities to create some of the best ideas and campaigns in Ireland. So it’s no wonder that we’re delighted to launch our biggest ever campaign for the iconic Heineken Bottle.
The brief – how do we get men to engage with the Heineken Bottle and take on a category that has seen speciality bottled beers gain in popularity. Rather than look to solely create an ad campaign, everyone aimed for a big idea: a fresh new philosophy for the brand, one that consumers could share and identify with.
“Live Every Last Drop” is the big idea that captures this new brand philosophy where stories are told through the eyes of the Heineken Bottle.
First up is the “One Green Bottle” TV commercial. It’s often said that your life flashes before your eyes if you are unfortunate to be visited by a near-death experience. This is the basic idea behind our first TV commercial, where we see the flashback of the life of a Heineken Bottle as it falls to a seemingly certain end.
Stories told through the eyes of Heineken bottles that Live Every Last Drop is a big idea that can stretch across any touchpoint and “One Green Bottle” is only the start of a big idea that will run and run.
Last year we created an integrated campaign for our client Tayto Crisps. By the end of the campaign, Tayto had sold close to 1 million extra packets of crisps. Here’s my version of how it all came to pass…
We’ve just got the results of a tracking study for a Whiskey Brand we have been working with in European markets. It makes very satisfying reading.
Three years ago McCanns got together with C&C after a pitch for one of their portfolio spirit brands. It was a singularly interesting project. The brand in question was number 3 in its category in the global market in 2005 and C&C wanted to make its move – charging the C&C marketing team and McCann with the rather onerous task of bringing a brand of doubtless possibility but very limited awareness to the success levels of its main competitors.
Its competitors are huge global brands – Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker, Jameson – with budgets matching these huge reputations. Simply put; it was a David v Goliath project. On top of that, any communications had to work in markets as diverse as Latvia, Bulgaria, Sweden and South Africa. If that were not challenging enough, each market has widely differing rules as to how we could advertise.
We aired the first campaign across Europe in the Autumn of 2006.
If you’re having any problems with the end line it means “Rough Country – Smooth Whiskey.” It was the start of something of a phenomenon. When McCanns and C&C’s senior international brand managers met just over a year after our launch commercial, the brand was something of a new superstar. Irlande…douze points…Irland…12 Points; Írsko…12 Bodov; Irlandia…Dwanaście Punktów; Irland…Tolv Punkterna.
We aired the follow-up commercial in Autumn 2008.
As a result of a simple, uncomplicated but thoroughly worked out creative strategy, Tullamore Dew has become the fastest growing whiskey – Irish, Scotch, Bourbon, any whiskey – in the world. After just 12 months total sales were up 19% versus market growth rate of 6% - the charts were and remain off the scale. Absolute credit where credit is deserved, Ann O’Leary who heads the C&C Tullamore Dew team, picked an AIM award and IAPI Adfx award in the campaign’s first year.
In 2006 & 2008, we produced a series of can designs for Diet Coke which expanded our creative thinking behind our campaign line: ‘Do your thing’. In effect, these four cans became mini-outdoor postings and helped to bolster the campaign on-pack.
One of the key learnings was the medium itself, designing on-pack has many more ink and print restrictions than traditional processes, simplicity is at the heart of a great can design that can shout louder than its competitors in the cooler cabinet. We also learnt that consumers each had their favourite design and would actively seek these out. Moonlight and Eye were the favourites. For Diet Coke drinkers, it is all about the can. They rummage to the very back of a cooler to find the coldest – and have a great deal of loyalty to its iconic design.
Moving into the second year, we took these learnings and created six new can designs that would each appeal to our audience in different ways. We treated the cans as fashionable accessories allowing the consumer to choose which can they prefer on shelf. The addition of the ‘Choose the look you love’ further strengthened this link with fashion. The can designs themselves were based on current fashion trends, for example lace and animal prints were very much in vogue.
The cans were an unbelievable success and created unbeatable coverage and talkability for the brand. People were actually collecting the complete set of cans which had a permanent home in the top of their fridge.
Outdoor to support the launch had immense cut-through and recall with consumers. Polka Dot, Zebra and Flock were used on 48 sheets, 6 sheets and Phone Kiosks.
The final year for ‘design can’ was 2008. With the introduction of new branding guidelines, the cans were simplified even further. A suite of six designs were created with the inclusion of the two most successful can designs from the previous year: Polka Dot and Zebra.
These designs really pushed what was achievable on-can with the print process. Metallic colouring was employed to great effect, especially on the Hawaiian Floral and Paisley patterns. An understanding of a restrictive print process and an insight into core drinkers made ‘design can’ hugely successful.
The common characteristic of successful companies and brands is a focus on growth. True success comes from growing the top line as opposed to relying on cutting costs to drive the bottom line. Companies have refocused their pursuit of profit outward. To the market. To generating revenue. To creating demand.
At McCann Erickson we have long realised this and we have idenfied the creation of demand as the most important contribution we can make to our clients success. This was the stimulus behind the development of the Demand Chain – an ordered and structured model for linking the key phases of demand creation.
The business world keep changing. Competition, channels and choice proliferate. The consumer is in control. Companies are reinventing themselves. Demand creation has never been more critical to success.
That is why McCann focused on making the Demand Chain as simple, logical, integrated and ideas-focused as possible.
Creating demand is never easy; it requires an artful balance of creativity, insight and rigour. That is why we never think of the Demand Chain as simply a set of templates to be completed. The richness for us is in the quality of people involved and the richness of the thinking applied. Successful demand creation brings together collaborative teams of talented professionals sharing common methods tools and language. These teams apply creative thinking and specialised expertise from multiple discipline to unlock growth from brands. These teams encompasss experts from across the agency and client team and work best when they are not restricted to Marketing people alone but encompass members of finance, sales and production teams.
McCann Erickson Dublin has applied the Demand Chain to multiple projects with very strong results. Indeed it has been applied to help us develop the future direction of the agency, providing real clarity at a time of great challenges in the world of brand communication. If you would like to find out more please contact Leo Moore at leo.moore@mccann.com
In 2006 & 2008, we produced a series of can designs for Diet Coke which expanded our creative thinking behind our campaign line: ‘Do your thing’. In effect, these four cans became mini-outdoor postings and helped to bolster the campaign on-pack.
