Heineken Launches the World’s First Virtual Beer in Metaverse-Decentraland
In fact, you can’t taste the beer.
On March 17, Heineken unveiled its first virtual beer “Heineken Silver” at Heineken’s virtual brewery in a 3D virtual world browser-based platform “Decentraland”. Heineken Silver is available exclusively through Decentraland and “brewed with Binary Coded Hops grown by NPC (non-player character) farmers,” according to the brand.
Described as being “filtered with superfast megabytes and through the best firewalls”, Heineken Silver has 100% computer-generated ingredients that are zero calories with no flavor.
Bram Westenbrink, Global Head Heineken® Brand, said: “At Heineken®, we believe that connecting with people is vital to human existence, like the air we breathe or the water we drink, and we know that the metaverse brings people together in a light-hearted and immersive way that is exciting — but it’s just not the best place to taste a new beer. Our new virtual beer, Heineken® Silver is an ironic joke. It is a self-aware idea that pokes fun at us and many other brands that are jumping into the metaverse with products that are best enjoyed in the real world. For now, you can’t taste pixels and bytes. So, we want to make a joke about that and remind everyone that nothing beats the taste of a refreshing beer, including our new virtual Heineken® Silver, in the real world.”
The goal of this campaign is to remind people that nothing can replace the experience of drinking a real beer in the real world, and the campaign achieved that by teasing the product in the game. When you immerse yourself fully into Decentraland, you actually can’t do much of anything in the company’s new digital brewery other than wandering around and watching a boring executive talk. But you can, with the help of Heineken’s marketing department, snap and then share some screenshots with the “cool and relevant hashtag: #awesomeheinekenmarketingstunt”
Results of the Campaign — According to my research, over 43.5K people reached by the hashtag on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter in the past 7 days which does not consider a lot. However, considering the current user in Decentraland is around 800,000, and the platform host around 6000 users each day, the reached number by the hashtag is quite reasonable. And by creating the first virtual beer in the world, the Heineken Silver campaign caught so much attention by all media platforms which help the brand drive up customer conversion rates. Heineken also became the second most valuable beer brand in the world following Budweiser in the first place in 2021, and I believe there is hope for the brand to become the first most valuable brand this year by this virtual marketing stunt.
This marketing stunt is genius after all in the beer industry since it is the first virtual beer ever to exist in the metaverse. In 2022, brands are rushing to enter the metaverse and launch products and experiences that don’t exist in the real world, Heineken risked it all and teased all the users in the game as a joke which reminded them that you can only taste the beer in the real world.In fact, they did not only teased the user in the metaverse by lauching this product but also mocked the whole metaverse by saying the experience in metaverse can never compare to what you experience in the real world. I believe other beer brands will probably want to do the same in the coming years since metaverse is the future, but they will never be the first one to do it.
A long-lasting brand needs futuristic thinking and courage to think out of the box.
Do you think this marketing stunt is a joke for the brand or a joke for us? Let me know in the comments!
