How it started

At Heineken, consumer understanding and closeness have always been a key imperative for business success, and with a new CEO in the driver’s seat this thinking only got reinforced. Each year, the brand organises ‘Commerce Week’, a global event to highlight the previous year’s successes, and present the next year’s projects within the company. For the 2020 event, Heineken was looking for a solution to do the following:

• Bring consumers closer to the business during ‘Commerce Week’, by showcasing consumer movies in presentations to illustrate existing knowledge and hypotheses
• Facilitate consumer connect interviews during ‘Commerce Week’

How we inspired change

Since 2016, Human8 has been running a structural consumer community for Heineken – the ‘Innovators Brewhouse’ Square. This English-only insight management platform, with more than 500 members from 15 markets, helps the brand keep an ongoing finger on the pulse of their consumers. Via consumer immersion, and concept and communication testing, Heineken receives a first, global sense check of new ideas. The brand then localizes these insights and tweaks the ideas to fit local needs in the next phase.

We recruited members from this ongoing community to provide an answer to Heineken’s current challenges:

• Consumer Immersion: in a video diary on the Square, consumers shared in-context feedback on their beverage consumption, attitudes and habits, in order to capture usage occasions, motivations, routines, and experiences
• Consumer Connect: via 50 online 30-minute webcam interviews, we connected Heineken’s internal stakeholders directly with consumers in their homes, during Commerce week

How it lives on

Our Consumer Connect solution provided the Heineken marketers with a more holistic view of the people that use their products and services. This increased their consumer understanding and empathy, leading to an even more consumer-centric mindset.