This year, The Heineken Cup Final and the Champions League Final are happening on the same Saturday (22nd May). Given Heineken are major sponsors of both events they wisely seized the opportunity to create a monumental day in the pub for Irish sports fans. Pubs across the country were taking part and they already had the name: ‘Heineken Star Saturday’. All they needed was an idea to bring it all together. We took the idea that two great sports were coming together as our starting point. From there we were able to work together with all of Heineken’s agencies to develop a consistent theme from online to ontrade and from outdoor to radio. The photographer was Kevin Griffin and the retouching was done by Midas in London.

There aren’t many things that can compete with the Heineken Cup for sheer drama and excitement. Except perhaps the drama of getting your pints of precious Heineken from A to B - in a packed pub of people, watching the game - without spilling a drop. That comes pretty close.

Here are the first two of five commercials we’ve just created which focus on this and other similar dramas that happen in the pub while watching the Heineken Cup. We’ll show you the other three as soon as they go on air.

‘Up & Under’.

‘Intercept’.

A big thank you goes to Brian O’Malley and Paul Holmes of Red Rage Productions who directed and produced them. And to our Heineken clients Aileen Donoghue and Aisling O’Brien for their invaluable contributions throughout. We hope you like them.

We’ve also just produced an outdoor campaign which focuses on the drama and excitement of the tournament itself. They were shot by Kevin Griffin and were retouched by Taylor James.

Now all we want is a Leinster v Munster Heineken Cup final in Paris in May. Fingers crossed.

The return of the Heineken Cup gives us another chance to look at our recent Heineken Cup spot “Field of Dreams”.
Set in the year 2028, it follows a documentary crew to a disused stadium to interview the old groundskeeper. While he reminisces about the great games he’s seen on this sacred turf, the crew are disturbed to see that ghostly presences still play out great moments from matches, proving that “Greatness Lives On”.
Shot over one very cold and very long night in the east end of London by Knucklehead’s directorial duo Zak & Dan, a massive amount of effort went into the Art Direction of the Stadium. Huge sections of the stands were carefully dressed providing a believable disused stadium that has fallen into disrepair, while the pitch was covered in overgrown sections of turf cut from a local piece of land. To create a sense of realism around the action, the players were captured on a hand cranked camera so that the film could be double exposed to create the ghostly effect, while the post production was handled in Framestore, London. Finally the performance by veteran actor John Nolan provided brought a sense of warmth and nostalgia to the ad.