The World Cup may have represented prime real estate for many beer brands, but Heineken-owned Spanish lager Cruzcampo has opted for a somewhat more relaxed approach in its latest video campaign. Produced by Lucky Generals, the ad features a man on a keg rolling down a Seville street, an image that the company says “embodies the carefree, relaxed spirit of Cruzcampo.”
In partnership with GumGum, an ad tech firm that specialises in identifying moments where consumers are most receptive, Heineken found that the brand over-indexes on attention in environments associated with escapism, discovery and leisure – not necessarily the cultural occassions one might associate with drinking beer.
“It was a bit different than traditional beer consumption occasions,” Viktoria Chomerova, Digital Media Manager at Heineken UK, tells VideoWeek. “You can see the link to cultural experiences and going out, but not necessarily environments connected with drinking. But we were able to see that this is actually where our high-intent consumers are.”
Using GumGum’s Mindset Graph, an AI tool that analyses data signals (including contextual, creative, device, environmental and behavioural signals) to surface ads where consumers are most receptive, the brand saw strong performance across lifestyle and leisure-driven environments. The Mindset Graph showed that open web content around holidays (such as travel tips and trending destinations) and dining (for example, articles about the best tasting menus in London) resonate with Cruzcampo’s target audience, leading to increased attention time and click-through rates.
“From the outside, you might think beer is beer, and they have different tastes, but how different can they all really be in their advertising, and how they present themselves?” says Rosemary Watkins-Moth, Digital Director, Client Direct at GumGum. “But actually in the Cruzcampo campaign we saw the audience really resonated with this relaxed, social, food and drink, laid-back attitude, and that’s very different to some of the other brands that might go more heavily on sports or going out.”
Empowering digital teams
These insights were particularly valuable to Heineken, according to Chomerova, as the advertiser shifts its focus from optimising for impressions and reach, towards metrics like engagement and attention. She says this is where tech partnerships add value for the company, which is “increasingly working directly with partners like GumGum.” The company works with Dentsu to handle strategic planning and traditional media buying, but the digital team sits in-house at Heineken, enabling them to choose their own tech partners.
“That gives us higher flexibility, we’re not relying on an agency to make the decisions for us,” comments Chomerova. “We have the knowledge of our brands, and our CMO trusts the digital team if finding a new partner is what we want to do.”
And GumGum is seeing this trend play out more broadly, with brands forging closer relationships with tech vendors, and more programmatic specialists being hired within those brands.
“It feels like there’s a lot more ambition for brands to sit a little bit closer to the partners that agencies work with, and more of a collaborative effort between brand, agency and tech partner,” observes Peter Wallace, GM for EMEA and JAPAC at GumGum. “CMOs aren’t necessarily in the weeds of the tech, but they’re facilitating knowledge in the businesses by hiring ex-agency, ex-traders, tech specialists, and I think you see quite a bit of that going on.”
Part of that shift is driven by the fact that brands switch up their agency partners, and Wallace notes that having that closer relationship serves both the advertiser and tech vendor. He adds that this also benefits the industry at large by increasing transparency between parts of the advertising ecosystem – an issue that has flared up in recent months as advertisers seek greater clarity from their agency partners, and agencies question the value added by ad tech intermediaries.
“The relationships in the industry are broadly changing or evolving, and becoming more transparent and more of a value exchange, which is very exciting for all parties, because hopefully it means that there’s an equitable understanding of everybody’s tech and the value that they add,” remarks Wallace. “So I think brand, agency and tech vendors sitting closer to one another is hugely valuable for the industry more broadly, because it reduces those little pockets of conversations that happen in the back room, and actually everybody knows exactly what’s going on.”
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