Marketo presents: Ask the CMO Will Heineken USA s newly imported Brazilian CMO be the brand s next legendary leader?
Sold in 178 countries, Heineken is a global brand with a global marketing challenge: How do you create location-specific content while also telling a coherent brand story from Belgium to Burundi? Heineken U.S.A. CMO Nuno Teles grapples with that question and its possible solutions every day. Imported this year by Heineken USA from Heineken Brazil, where he was the company s vice president of marketing, Teles has bolstered Heineken s longrunning global campaigns like Legends, helped introduce new viral hits like Champion the Match and led initiatives to mine for data and trends that fuel the more than 250 brands underneath the Heineken umbrella, including Dos Equis, Amstel and Desperados, a new tequila-flavored beer. Mashable sat down with Teles at his new perch in New York to talk about how the brand tracks consumer behaviors, how it speaks to beer (and cider) drinkers around the globe and why a bold and relevant message is still paramount to brand marketing. Q&A with Nuno Teles, CMO of Heineken U.S.A. IMAGE: MASHABLE COMPOSITE: CHRIS MINESES Heineken is sold in nearly 200 countries; how does the brand stay location-specific while maintaining a unified message? It s about having the right combination of global assets that can be locally relevant and a very clear brand positioning statement that people understand. At Heineken, our brand asset is be a man of the world to believe that in order to progress, you need to go beyond your comfort zone. in order to progress, you need to go beyond your comfort zone. That helps us operate in a consistent way even when we explore other assets. For example, our current Champions League campaign is being broadcast in the U.S. and on online video. Then, we have what we call local topspin, which is a challenge to the US consumer. Would he like to back to work in the afternoon, or would he like to go to Barcelona? If he wants to go to Barcelona, he needs to convince his boss to go with him. This is going beyond your comfort zone, and this is how we believe we can operate with local relevance in a country while following our global assets.
How has Heineken looked at consumer behaviors, and what observations and behaviors has it incorporated into its marketing, design and product? We have identified three mega-trends that influence what we do with our core brands. They first is the Mexification of America how the U.S. is impacted by both Mexican culture and the demographics that are driven by the growth of Mexican consumers. That significantly impacts our creative ideas and how we market Dos Equis and Tecate. The second trend is flavor promiscuity, which is driven by the fact that seven out of 10 consumers want to try new flavors. That supports the work we want to do with cider, specifically the Strongbow brand. We know the business that cider stimulates sources from wine and soft drinks. It s incremental to the beer business. The third mega-trend is the shift to best the acknowledgement that millennials are more keen to choose top quality than a friend s recommendation, which is quite bizarre in this digital world where a Facebook recommendation would be the best and most important choice. This is the reason why we ve been very successful with our Best-Tasting Light Beer campaign with Neil Patrick Harris. How is mobile playing a role in Heineken s marketing efforts, and how does a brand tell a consistent story over all of its social channels? We don t look at digital in isolation. We look at three Ss. The first is science. We ask what is the science? What are the insights? What is the knowledge I have about my consumers? The second S is the story. What is the story I can create based on those insights? What can I say to the consumer that I know will be relevant. The third S is the speed in delivering that story. Nowadays, digital allows us to connect with a significant amount of consumers in a very speedy way. With our Best-Tasting Light campaign, we reached out to 37 million people in three days using only digital. You can t look at that in isolation, though. I would look at that in the context of what s the big, bold idea that I have. I need to have something interesting to say, and that needs to be grounded in insight. IMAGE: HEINEKEN USA in order to progress, you need to go beyond your comfort zone.
How do you measure the impact of your marketing organization on the company? Do you feel like you can connect your marketing programs to revenue growth? New customer acquisition? Ongoing satisfaction? Retention? Nowadays it s all about winning within the repertoire that consumers have. We re not talking at all about penetration or reaching out to new consumers. Now we know that on average, a consumer has 12 brands in their repertoire, so it s all about how can we be the brand they prefer within their repertoire. It s all about the behavior of the consumer and linking the communication to sales lift. The ultimate measurement, I would say, is the base volume lift that that can generate. The path that leads there is to have top creativity, delivered through a very competitive media plan. I need to have awareness and the shadow voice that will make my communication competitive. That should trigger brand consideration, trial and, ultimately, sales lift. If I had to choose one, though, I d choose the ability to change consumer behavior through incremental sales. What are the economic benefits of engagement, and how can they be measured? How do marketers persuade their peers in other functions to care about engagement? If you don t engage the consumer, you ll never have a consumer change their behavior. Engagement is a way to start influencing a consumer. If they don t feel engaged with the communication, then there s no point in reaching out to them. With Dos Equis Masquerade campaign, for example, we made an online video and TV spot that portrayed the Most Interesting Man and announced the party he d have in his mansion. The activation we did was around an interactive video where 47 million consumers interacted with the video for 2.5 minutes. That is true engagement. Making sure that amount of consumers will interact with you for that amount of time is huge. What are some of the challenges of forming a relationship with your customer when you re disconnected from them because you sell through stores? The way we stay connected to the shopper and consumer through the wholesaler and then the retailer is to have a good understanding of our shoppers and our potential consumers and to see how they behave. Who buys our brand? We now have ways to use data from our shoppers to find
better and more efficient ways to sell our beers, which are also relevant to the wholesaler and retailer. We bring path-to-purchase initiatives to our marketing initiatives and it helps us stay connected to the shopper, even through a three-tier system. How does Heineken reach fans on their second screens and how does Heineken make sure fans have a positive association with the brand on social media? Nowadays, the question is: Is TV the first screen, or the first screen a mobile screen? I believe everything is going mobile and that if we can develop something that ll work effectively, in mobile, it ll be significantly more successful. In all of our campaigns, we have a strong mobile component. Both the Masquerade and Best-Tasting Light Beer campaigns were designed for the second screen. In another campaign, we had guys who were confronted with a challenge at lunchtime do you go to Barcelona to watch the Champions League game, or do you go back to the office and watch it? You have to decide now though. It s a great way to deliver a relevant message while you re using a second screen. For the Desperados brand, we deliver the message through social. We found that in the states where we used social, we reached 23% awareness. In states where use TV, we reach close to 0%. You start to see that if you want to reach millennials in a pre-party occasion, digital and social start to be significantly more effective media than the TV is. Where do you see marketing heading in the next three to five years? I see data and science driving marketing moving forward. We ll extract insights from consumers and know more about them and what drives their behavior. The way we do research will not be the same. It will be a transformation moving forward. Then, the creativity will continue to be paramount. The bar will be higher. The demand to have better creativity will be there. We will also acknowledge how speedy things are; how fast you can deliver a message. All that is fantastic. For marketers, it means we are facing exciting times. Why having a message and delivering it is still paramount for marketers? If you have the media, but you don t have the message, it s a waste of resources. If you have a great message that s grounded in an insight but you don t deliver it, that s a missed opportunity. You re basically not able to reach out to the right consumer at the right time. It s a combination of the three Ss. If you have one S, but not the others, you ve missed the point. It s great to have great, bold campaigns, but if it isn t grounded in insights and mega-trends, then you ve again missed the point; you don t know what will drive change in the market. The last thing is that you need to deliver that in a sophisticated, social, digital way. Nowadays, that may well be the only way for you to reach the consumer. HEINEKEN S VIDEO RESPONSE TO ODYSSEY CRITICISM creativity will continue to be paramount.