- Heineken is pushing consumers to unplug from social media with a recent global campaign, “Social off Socials,” per details shared with Marketing Dive.
- The campaign includes partnerships with musician Joe Jonas and popular creators including Dude with Sign, Lil Cherry and Paul Olima for a video spot that dramatizes a world where no one is on social media because they’re too busy connecting in real life.
- The campaign launched within the U.S. and shall be followed by a global rollout over the subsequent six months spanning TV, social media, out-of-home and digital media across the Americas, Europe and APAC. The effort is supported by brand-commissioned research indicating that over half (52%) of adults are overwhelmed by the pressure to maintain up with social media.
Heineken is showing consumers what an unplugged life looks like with its “Social off Socials” campaign. The effort is inspired by brand-commissioned research that studied the screen time of 17,000 adults worldwide and discovered that the typical person spends nearly 6 hours per day their device. The constant screen time is taking a toll, with 51% of respondents reporting that their social battery is depleted after prolonged online interactions. That toll is even higher for Gen Z, with 62% reporting that they feel socially drained by digital engagement.
To help consumers combat digital overload, the brewer teamed with American musician Jonas and a handful of the world’s most followed creators to inform the story of how they’d react to empty social feeds if more people were offline and fascinating IRL. The two-minute spot depicts Jonas alone in a dystopian world, on a freeway amid abandoned cars. As a version of “What a Wonderful World,” plays, Jonas checks his social feed, which reveals the brand new content he posted has received no engagement.
As time progresses, creators are seen eating alone, throwing out their halo lights and resorting to posting flyers on streetlights asking for likes and subscribers. As things get more bleak, Jonas cries to the heavens, “Where is everybody?” only to seek out the Heineken logo glowing down the road where people have gathered for a good time on the bar.
“Working with creators — who’re by their nature at all times online — to spotlight the answer could seem ironic, but they too know it’s about balance and were as eager as us to encourage IRL socializing,” said Nabil Nasser, global head of Heineken, in a statement provided to Marketing Dive. “So many individuals feel overwhelmed by the pressure of constant online engagement, so we would like to indicate how easy it could actually be to take a break from social media.”
The campaign was developed by creative agency LePub and is being supported by PR agency The Romans and creator-focused social agency Billion Dollar Boy. The effort may even include short movies posted across the creators’ social channels, where they may urge followers to disconnect and take part in offline experiences. The campaign kicked off with an event last week in New York City where Jonas and the creator Dude with Sign posed IRL in store windows modeled to appear like Instagram Reels fairly than posting online. Jonas also used the event to debut a recent single, “Heart by Heart.”
The effort is an element of the brand’s ongoing marketing efforts to encourage people to place down their phones and interact in additional real-world activities. Previous campaigns have included creating a throwback limited-edition “dump phone” that contained none of the trendy smartphone distractions, a mobile app called The Boring App that daunts smartphone use at in-person social gatherings, and an artificial intelligence-powered phone case that routinely flips a user’s phone face down when the word “cheers” is uttered.
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