Work
Launching Wild
H41 Wild Lager is a limited edition lager created by Heineken® Master Brewers. The secret ingredient to H41 is wild yeast – the ‘’mother yeast’’ of all the lager yeasts, which was discovered in Patagonia in 2010, at the coordinates 41° South and 71° West, hence the name H41.
Heineken® knows that the craft beer market has widened the tastes of many beer drinkers. As a brand that’s built on innovation, Heineken® always wants to ensure it’s delivering on consumers’ emerging tastes and needs.
Working with HEINEKEN Ireland, Thinkhouse was tasked with bringing consumers on a ‘Journey of Discovery’. So, for this exciting launch, we organised and curated three key launch moments in April. Each event was custom built for different audiences: consumers, media and trade customers, and hosted by a very special guest, Heineken® Master Brewer, Willem van Waesberghe.
Offering up insight about the beer’s story and the brewing process, the events were hosted in venues such as Bruxelles and Idlewild, with our Events Team transforming each venue into the Patagonian rainforest.
Because this campaign is all about discovery, we didn’t want to be blatant in our marketing. We wanted to be mysterious; to give our fans something to discover. Our Creative Team developed teasing content that hinted that something new and exciting was coming to Dublin and amplified across Heineken’s own digital channels.
To ensure media were anticipating something exciting, we developed an ‘air-mail arrival from Patagonia’ media drop to whet their appetite for the launch event.To drive word of mouth – critical for the success of any new product, we custom built a network for H41. This ‘Collective’ was made up of genuine Heineken® fans who were part of Dublin’s hotbed of creative talent.
The results were wild, with 15 media hits and a reach of over 1,600,000 – with key top end media getting behind the launch story – most of which featured interviews with Willem.
Because we live in an ‘experience economy’, we wanted to add a new layer of discovery to the campaign something that opens the world to Heineken® fans. In conjunction with Dublin creatives The Locals, we organised a series of H41 Walking Tours around our capital city. The tours showcased ‘a different side of Dublin’. On the tour, they also got to discover H41 Wild Lager.
The tours were a complete sell out, demonstrating that brands that dare to allow customers to discover intriguing, new adventures, always win.