Beer and nicknames: they’re two hallmarks of Australian culture. Australians have a knack for nicknaming everything – something which marketing campaigns have previously capitalised on. Now Heineken, already a popular beer brewer, is seeking to combine both with the newest out-of-home digital campaign ‘Beer Nicknames’.

The new campaign is asking the public to invite their mates for a beer by scanning and submitting their favourite beer-related nicknames.

These user-submitted nicknames have the chance, once verified, to be displayed on oOh!Media’s large digital screens in The Bourke and Emporium in Melbourne and Murray St in Perth.

Beer Nicknames: appealing to Gen Z

Heineken’s new campaign is specifically designed to drive engagement with Gen Z, offering them the chance to have their moment of fame on a big screen. Gen Z represents a significant consumer market, with disposable incomes predicted to increase almost seven-fold to $3.2 trillion in 2030.

The digital aspect of the campaign fits perfectly with Gen Z’s position as digital natives, and its focus on nicknames appeals to their desire for personalised and omni-channel marketing approaches.

The campaign makes use of oOh!’s creative technology, using a dynamic application that manages, reads, validates and embeds the messages into the large format digital sites. Hopefully the company has a solid verification system in place – one which picks up on disguised profanities or offensive language, which might have the potential to cause brand controversy.

Heineken seems to have high hopes for the digital campaign. “This innovative solution exemplifies oOh!’s commitment to utilising creative technology to empower clients to broadcast and update their campaigns in real-time, creating meaningful connections with their target audiences across the oOh! network,” says Richard Moore, production director at POLY.

The dynamic creative is collected with an immersive microsite built by AFFINITY, which collects user submissions.

Nicknaming a focus for Heineken

Heineken celebrated the 150-year anniversary earlier this year, having started as a small family brewery in the city centre of Amsterdam in 1873. Part of this celebration was the launch of the ‘Celebrate Whatever You Call Us’ campaign, which encouraged Aussies to make up nicknames for Heineken beer.

Now, Heineken is again focusing on campaigns that promote Aussies generating nicknames for the company. ‘Heineken’ can be a mouthful – in more ways than one – and the newest campaign could curb this difficulty, while also facilitating playful sharing among customers. It might not lead to a ubiquitous, quintessentially Aussie nickname like Maccas, but it’s a start.

“Australians have such an enthusiastic passion for nicknaming everything, and yet, despite Heineken being one of the nation’s most popular beers to drink, we realised Aussies don’t really have an existing nickname for our brand. Rather than trying to force this, the campaign centres around inserting Heineken into the existing category vernacular of beer nicknames and we used innovative out of home to leverage Aussie’s imagination and creativity in a unique way,” says Dino Bozzone, country manager Australia, Heineken.

oOh!Media worked in collaboration with Lion’s media agency UM, strategic digital agency AFFINITY and POLY, oOh!’s creative and innovation hub, to develop the campaign.