ILLOGICAL
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Intuition and emotion
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"I'm proud to receive this advertising award, but I'm afraid the
secret will now get out that I'm a genius."
In German it's Fingerspitzengefiihl, in English it's feeling, but
whatever you call it, Alfred Heineken had a gift for marketing and
advertising and could judge to perfection how best to promote
consumer loyalty to the brand. When presented with a new
campaign proposal, he always tried to imagine how it would be
received by housewives in provincial towns. How would they view
the campaign? How closely did the message relate to the world of
the ordinary beer drinker? Alfred Heineken knew better than
anyone that in The Netherlands - unlike other countries -
Heineken beer had to be marketed as a premium brand but still
had to stay within the reach of the ordinary consumer in the
provinces.
If Alfred Heineken didn't like a campaign, there was no changing
his mind: the advertising people had to start afresh. "Advertising
is mainly a question of intuition and emotion. Advertising is an
alpha activity, but if you try to elevate it to a scientific discipline,
you have to inject a large dose of beta. It's important, of course,
to study the figures and the research into what your target group
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