Leveraging late February pre-season testing ahead of the start of the first F1 Grand Prix, official partner Heineken enlisted father and son racers to front the latest iteration of its long-running responsible drinking campaign.
Former F1 World Champions Nico Rosberg and father Keke are the new faces of the beer brand’s latest responsible consumption creative refreshing its ongoing ‘When You Drive, Never Drink’ campaign.
The initiative, which seeks to limit drink driving by ‘making moderate drinking cool’ simultaneously promotes the brand’s alcohol-free beer, Heineken 0.0.
The hero commercial features the father-and-son pair star in a relatable story of familial rivalry in which the Rosbergs compete against each other in several sports – including fishing, petanque and tennis – with the winner earning the right to drive the car home. Nico is largely frustrated by his dad at almost every turn, before finally getting his chance to drive after meeting his father in a bar where he is drinking zero-alcohol beer.
The campaign includes 90-, 60- and 30-second edits and runs on TV, online and social and is supported by additional digital and social assets and is being rolled out in multiple countries around the world.
The copy then sees Heineken say that the best driver is always the one that doesn’t drink and drive and that no matter how confident the driver – even F1 World Champions – no one should drink and drive.
The insight behind the initiative emerged from Heineken’s own research showing that overconfidence in driving ability after consuming alcohol is a key cause of drunk driving.
“For our When You Drive, Never Drink campaign to have impact, we first needed to delve into the deep-rooted causes of drink-driving. Our global research discovered that, while people don’t set out to drink and drive, often when we’re at the point of decision making, our good intentions falter in the face of temptation,” explained Heineken Senior Global Brand Director Gianluca Di Tondo.
“These insights have given us the opportunity to better target our marketing to make real impact by developing a new communications campaign which focuses on the root causes of drink driving.”
The campaign was created by a team at Publicis Italy which included Global Chief Creative Officer Publicis World Wide Bruno Bertelli, Chief Creative Officer Italy Cristiana Boccassini, Global Executive Creative Directors Luissandro Del Gobbo, Marco Venturelli and Luca Cinquepalmi, Head of Art Costanza Rossi, Creative Supervisor James Andrews, International Strategic Planner James Moore, Head of TV Production Mariella Maiorano, TV Producer Tania Dal Pra, Worldwide Account Director David Pagnoni, International Client Service Director Eleni Charakleia, Account Director Silvia Ghiretti, Digital Account Director Alexandra Stoica and Senior Account Manager Jan Wojtkowski.
The production company was Bacon Production with Director Martin Werner, DOP Martin Ruhe, Executive Producer Mette Jermiin, Producer Samuel Cantor, Production Designer Peter Grant, Costume Designer Pernille Holm and Editor Russell Icke.
The post production company was MPC with Executive Producer Dafydd Upsdell, Sound Engineer Raj Sehgal working at Grand Central Recording Studios.
Comment:
This playful, yet serious initiative reflects the brewing giant’s strategy is to combine the power of the Heineken brand and of F1 to make moderate drinking cool and every year it commits 10% of its media spend to promoting responsible drinking.
This 2020 F1-led responsible drinking follows in the footsteps of previous initiatives including previous Rosberg fronted work in 2018 (see case study), as well as its inventive 2018 ‘Grid Waiter’ stunt promoting its zero alcohol beer (see case study) and 2016’s initiative fronted by Jackie Stewart (see case study).
Of course, Heineken isn’t the only beer brand adopting this strategy within its sports rights space.
For example, another notable recent example is the ‘Guinness Clear’ responsible drinking initiative fronted by Brian O’Driscoll and leveraging its 6 Nations title sponsorship rights (see case study).
Links:
Heineken
https://www.facebook.com/HeinekenUK
https://www.instagram.com/Heineken/
https://www.youtube.com/user/heineken
Publicis Italy
F1
https://www.facebook.com/Formula1/
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