Heineken Italy’s UEFA 2012 CL StarPlayer Stunt

Heineken staged a special broadcast of the 2012 UEFA Champions League final match in a pub in Milan with two legends of Italian football – Billy Costacurta and José Altafini – in the pub giving live commentary.

But unknown to everyone, the Dutch beer giant’s marketers have hidden cameras everywhere in the pub in order to give everyone present a major stunt surprise.

This initiative sees the beer brand is promoting this year’s Star Player app in Italy with a pub stunt that led to the creation of a humour-led YouTube video.

To celebrate the brand’s sponsorship of the Champions League Final, Heineken and Publicis Milan created a practical-joke targeting two well-known former footballers.

Ex-Milan players Alessandro Costacurta and José Altafini were invited to commentate on the match between Bayern Munich and Chelsea at Bar Magenta (in Milan), alongside 100 lucky fans.

The action, however, was time-delayed by two minutes, enabling cleverly positioned members of the public (who were in on the gag) to shout out events before they happened. The waitress at the bar, for example, correctly predicted Chelsea’s decision to bring on Florent Malouda, just prior to the announcement on TV.
The film records the reactions of Costacurta and Altafini, as well as the other fans in the bar, as random members of the audience call goals, substitutions and penalty misses correctly.
As the game finishes, a message from Heineken appears on screen, reading: ‘To become an authentic master of tuition, play with Star Player.’
This event promotes the second instalment of Heineken’s Star Player app which was originally released in April 2011.

Comment:

Building on the stellar success of the initial StarPlayer roll out has been a challenge for Heineken. But this single market stunt has certainly attracted plenty of attention and interest and has generated 2.3 million views on YouTube to date.

Links:

Webfilm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vjigfoTC1rE

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http://www.facebook.com/heineken

Website

www.heineken.it