Title	#TWELFTAL
Brand	HEINEKEN NETHERLANDS
Product/Service	HEINEKEN
Category	A09. USE OR INTEGRATION OF DIGITAL OR SOCIAL MEDIA
Entrant Company	BOOMERANG CREATE Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Contributing Company	BOOMERANG CREATE Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Contributing Company 2	HEINEKEN INTERNATIONAL Zoeterwoude, THE NETHERLANDS
Media Agency	STARCOM MEDIAVEST GROUP Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS

Name	Company	Position
Alexander Veltman	Boomerang Create	Client Director
Jordi Van De Bovenkamp	Boomerang Create	Creative Director
Bram Westenbrink	Heineken Netherlands	Marketing Director
Rob Van Griensven	Heineken Netherlands	Head Of Media/Sponsoring/Crm
Paul Tholen	Heineken Netherlands	Brand Manager Heineken
Joris Lak	Starcom	Head Of Digital

The Campaign

Heineken’s #TWELFTAL campaign was held during the World Cup 2014. As a beer brand, Heineken therefor faced restrictions in communication concerning this event. Not being the official sponsor of the World Cup, it is not allowed to mention the World Cup event in their content. Also, Heineken needed to comply with Dutch regulations regarding alcohol to portray or mention sportsmen.

Results

The Heineken brand has a unique position in The Netherlands when it comes to National Pride. During the World Cup this feeling of pride reaches an all time high, called Orange Fever. In this high volume period for beer, it’s challenging to capture the attention of consumers. But there was one place we could capture their attention: TWITTER! During football matches, people massively communicate with each other on this platform, creating a huge opportunity for Heineken. So we set Twitter at the heart of our agile and real-time content approach, to spread the Orange Fever all over The Netherlands. We created our own World Cup team: #TWELFTAL, coached by Heineken. The name ‘Twelftal’ was formed through a witty wordplay between the word ‘Twitter’ and the word ‘elftal’, Dutch for ‘team’. The Twelftal was a handpicked squad of eleven credible Dutch Twitter influencers that created amazingly funny & agile content pre-, during and post- match using the hashtag ‘TWELFTAL’. The kick-off was the match against Wales on June 4th. From that point on, the team was assembled for every Dutch game during The World Cup. Heineken's challenge was to organically associate the brand with the content produced by the Twelftal. Heineken positioned itself as the coach and facilitator of Twelftal on owned/earned channels but also took part in creating real time content itself. This content was just slightly branded and posted before, during and after matches and was promoted through paid media as well.

Content was mainly spread around World Cup matches via the Twitter accounts of eleven Dutch Twitter influencer using the recognizable hashtag ‘TWELFTAL’. For example, minutes after winning the game against Spain, a #TWELFTAL-image of a lion (the national Dutch symbol) made from clouds and moving over the country Spain like a weather forecast was posted and spread via Twitter. It went viral in seconds. Heineken also tweeted and promoted #TWELFTAL content via their own Twitter account. Content traveled far beyond just Twitter alone when blogs, national newspapers as well as the most high profile TV broadcasts picked it up.

The #TWELFTAL content was so specific and funny, that content went viral not once, but during every Dutch match. Blogs started writing about #TWELFTAL ánd Heineken’s role, generating thousands of likes and further sparking the online conversation. Articles about #TWELFTAL found its way to national newspapers and the most high profile Dutch TV broadcasts. Twelftal members even appeared on national news television. This broadcast generated an astonishing reach of 9.1 million viewers. The Twitter campaign stimulated not only the sharing of #TWELFTAL content and thereby the ‘Orange Fever’ but also active content creation by consumers. It proved that it’s possible to take a Twitter activation far beyond just Twitter alone, and significantly impact brand equity. Heineken was credibly linked to all the content that was massively shared not just on Twitter, but also on Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram. The campaign had great results in terms of participation and reach with over 100.000 tweets and 81 million impressions. It generated an interaction-rate of 10,0% (Dutch benchmark of 2,0%). Ashley Vinson, Twitter stated: “The Heineken #TWELFTAL campaign was a perfect creative concept for Twitter - great content & great timing. This is the type of work all brands should seek to do”.