MARKETING   |   POSTED ON 23.06.2014

Heineken’s brand promise is to deliver exciting adventures and a perfect way to achieve this is through their innovative campaign in the style of a game show. It captures the imagination and dream of many, to do something spontaneously that is outside our daily routine and explore the traveller inside all of us.

Heineken set up the “Departure Roulette” in JFK, New York, to further promote Heineken’s global and innovative campaign “Dropped”, a reality web series where travellers are dropped from a helicopter into a random location around the world where they have to fend for themselves.

It was a real-life real-time social brand experiment offering free trips to different countries, the only catch is that they had to leave right then and there – not knowing the final destination until the button was pushed. 7 people were adventurous enough to push the button and received flights to places such as Cyprus, Portugal, Thailand, Laos etc. Heineken’s underlying intention was to prove that a legendary journey is born out of spontaneity and taking a risk, not from planning.

Greg Vosits was about to fly out to visit his grandparents in Austria when he won a trip to Cyprus. Heineken booked him a hotel room for two nights and gave him $2000 to cover any expenses. They also arranged a flight from Cyprus to Vienna, and then from Vienna back to New York.

Great for Greg but also for Heineken. The marketing campaign was aired on YouTube, using digital visualisation to drive customer engagement and share the experience of ‘anything is possible’.