ILLOGICAL
Heinekenj
5
During 50 years at the company,
Mr Heineken has established a world
wide network of breweries and has
been the main source of inspiration
behind the development of the com
pany's brands. The Amsterdam-based
group is now the world's second big
gest brewery, with activities in 170
countries, and there are few products
with such a public awareness as the
Heineken brand.
"You have to be daring and crea
tive, but simplicity is really the key to
our success. There are three basic
factors. Constant quality - a beer has
to taste the same time and time again,
wherever it is sold. The packaging
has to be reliable. Then you have to
sell it".
"The bottom line is advertising is
good when it helps your market share
go up and bad when it doesn't. Beer
drinking is perceived differently in
different countries. We are a premi
um brand in the US, a mainstream
lager in the UK, the best local beer in
Holland".
Creativity
In Mr Heineken's own eyes, his
main contribution to the company has
been an eye for detail, forward-think
ing and the capacity to say 'no' - "an
entrepreneur's most important asset".
An inventor, interior designer and
composer, Mr Heineken's creativity
has never been in doubt, but it is a
word he uses sparingly.
"Firstly, I have been a salesman.
Worked until my feet hurt. Learning
the hard way. Everybody should have
done that. Secondly I always think in
terms of generations. Tomorrow's
profit means nothing to me. I am
focusing on where the company will
be in 20 years' time", he says.
After studying sales and distribu
tion practices in the US, Mr Heineken
returned to the family-owned compa
ny in 1949 fired by the potential of
advertising. "I came back crazy about
ads. Our company at that time had an
advertising budget of ƒ160,000 and
the advertising department consisted
of one guy whose main principle was
that advertising was a waste of
money", he explains.
Mr Heineken soon started ringing
the changes at the company, although
it took years to fully convince every
body of the value of advertising. He
got rid of the apostrophe and's' in the
brand name - a move which saved the
company a fortune in neon sign costs.
He devised a new bottle label and had
the brand name set in lower case.
"I realised that when I signed my
own name it looked friendlier than
the Heineken on the beer bottle,
which was set all in capitals.
Heineken in upper case has eleven
vertical lines - far too many to be read
easily - and the name spread round
the corner of the bottle. It was use
less", he explains.
Safe
His biggest coup in the early days
though was to get the management
board to accept a new green label.
The old labels had a grey background
with a large red star. "Now red is a
dangerous colour for food and drink
products. But green is safe. And con
sumers are very conservative about
what goes into their stomachs.
Nevertheless, people thought I was
out of my mind", he says.
After trying around two hundred
different labels, Heineken finally con
vinced the management board of the
merits of the final green logo.
"Market share shot up 5%. But you
didn't have to be a genius to work that
one out", Mr Heineken notes.
Another Heineken brain wave was
the famous tilted 'e' in the brand
name. "We had scientists looking
through microscopes for days work
ing out the right degree of tilt for the
'e'. Too far one way its looks sad, too
far the other and it is crazy. If you
look at it now, it smiles at you", he
says.
Mr Heineken also quickly cotton
ed on to customer identification. "A
former office cleaner, a salt-of-the-
earth Amsterdam type, turned round
to me one day and shouted 'Gosh, I'm
also a lady!'. The point is that it is not
how people are, it is how they see
themselves. In our advertising in the
late 1940s we had an unshaven work-
THE WORLD OF HEINEKEN
