Research has indicated that many fans watch matches at home alone so, in this year's campaign, Heineken focused on the event as a shared experience with friends. "Heineken showed a group of friends behaving like footballers - only to reveal that they were UEFA Champions League fans watching the match." The message to the fans? "To take the watching of the UEFA Champions League as seriously as the players taking part in it do!" says Tim. Taking the idea of a shared experience for fans a step further is Heineken's Star Final concept. Every year, since the 2006-07 season, Heineken hosts a live screening of the UEFA Champions League final at an exotic location for a select group of competition winners. Previous Star Final events have taken place in Iceland, South Africa and Thailand. This year, the destination was Brazil, one of the greatest footballing nations on earth and the birthplace of some of the sport's most legendary icons, like Zico and Pelé. There was an online game to test if consumers were 'Siesta', or 'Fiesta' - giving them the chance to attend a special screening at Rio de Janeiro's famous Copacabana Beach. "With the Facebook connect application integrated in this game, our aim was to create a buzz on the world's largest social media network and to generate additional traffic to our website," Tim says. "This was also supported with banners, online seeding and a viral to generate enthusiasm around the competition. In only a few weeks, we already had 2.24 million unique visitors to the website!" The event proved to be a great success. Three hundred lucky winners were flown to Brazil to experience the thrilling final on 22 May between FC Internazionale Milano and FC Bayern Munich, live from Madrid. All in all, through the heineken.com website, its Facebook page and viral video, more than two million people from all over the globe engaged with the brand. "The effect of this is twofold," continues Tim. "First, we captured their Facebook information which, going forward, allows us to build a relationship with them. Second, their membership of the Star Final group is then visible to all of their friends, who may then also be motivated to click the link and join themselves. This massively increases our reach, way beyond direct visitors to the Star 42

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World of Heineken | 2010 | | pagina 44