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Innovation
Profitable, consumer-focused innovation across
the Heineken® brand, global brands and our wider
portfolio continues to be an essential part of
driving consumer preference and ultimately
volume and value growth. To support the
development of new and stronger innovation
concepts, we introduced a global approach
together with cross-regional and cross-functional
teams. Integrated and faster development of
roll-outs, combined with a stronger execution, will
lead to a growth in innovation. Our objective is an
increase in our innovation rate of 3 per cent today
to 6 per cent by 2020.
The roll-out and leverage of existing innovations
will continue: Heineken Extra Cold®, DraughtKeg®,
BeerTender® and David®. Heineken Extra Cold is
now available in 116 countries with 85,000 systems.
We added three new brands for DraughtKeg,
bringing the total now available to 11 with an
overall volume of nearly 600,000 hectolitres.
BeerTender, now in 12 markets, remains a strong
driver for the full draught experience at home.
The roll-out of the convenient and high-quality
David proposition, for smaller on-trade outlets,
continued. David is now being used in 60 countries
with more than 65,000 systems.
Focus on consumers and portfolios
In order to support our Operating Companies in
delivering top-line growth, we have successfully
run and completed extensive portfolio reviews
via a more standardised approach. This 'Building
Winning Portfolio' process provides a clear
competitive advantage.
We focused on strong portfolio strategies for
the newly acquired businesses in Mexico and
Brazil and completed portfolio reviews in Italy,
Switzerland, Greece, Taiwan and New Zealand.
We also carried out consumer segmentation
projects to enhance the positioning for our
key brands in the Netherlands, Serbia, Croatia,
FYR Macedonia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.
The knowledge developed in the area of portfolio
management will become an integral part of the
marketing capabilities training programme so that
this competence can be transferred to operating
companies across the world.
Capability building
The Heineken Company has the ambition to
generate greater value and drive growth from our
brands' assets. In combination with new market
realities in recent years, this has lead to the
creation of the Marketing Capability and the Sales
Capability departments within Global Commerce.
These will allow us to embed more rigorous,
standardised and professional tools and processes
in the fields of brand, portfolio, channel and
customer management. The need for this was
also identified by the Functional Competencies
programme. This will create and embed a common,
consumer- and brand-oriented, world-class
approach to Marketing and Sales management
at Heineken, based on best practices.
Heineken N.V. Annual Report 2010
