To promote the new season of The Noite (a show hosted by one of Brasil’s most popular comedian), Publicis Brasil came up with a new button on YouTube. For the first time they created a campaign where people could choose between a “Skip Ad” and “Troll this ad” button. This tweak to the YouTube pre-roll ads resulted in 4 times more video views for the campaign.
Here are two campaigns that Heineken created in Europe to give away seats for the UEFA Champions League finals in London last month.
Heineken challenged football fans at a furniture store in the Netherlands to convince their ladies to buy a $1899 set of plastic stadium chairs for their home. If they managed to pull it off, they would win a trip to the final. The result:
In Italy, Heineken hid 20 tickets under 20 Wembley seats and spread them around Rome and Milan. Fans then had only one hour to find them and secure their place at the final. The result:
Both ideas do the same strategic job. They make the sponsorship feel like something you can play, not just something you watch.
In European football sponsorship, ticket scarcity is a powerful emotion. Brands win when they turn that emotion into participation that fans can retell in one breath.
The Negotiation works because it stages a recognisable domestic conflict and turns it into a public challenge. You do not have to care about Heineken to enjoy the tension. You just need to recognise the situation.
The Seat works because it feels like a real-world game with an unfair advantage for the most alert fans. A one-hour window and a physical search turns “tickets” into a quest, and the city becomes the interface.
A persuasion challenge staged in a real retail environment. The couple dynamic is the entertainment engine, and the prize converts the tension into a payoff.
Because it turns passive desire into active effort. The search itself becomes the content, and the winners feel like they earned the prize rather than being randomly selected.
They convert a sponsorship from branding to experience. The brand becomes part of how fans remember the final, not just a logo around it.
Perceived unfairness. If the rules, locations, or timing feel stacked, the conversation flips from excitement to frustration.
Look for participation rate, speed of uptake, earned media pickup, and how often people retell the mechanic in social posts. Those indicate whether the idea actually travelled.
Just last week I wrote about the Heineken Star Player app that has been designed to let fans interact in real time with the nail biting action of the UEFA Champions League.
To promote the same Star Player app in Italy, Heineken decided to prank a famous sports bar in Milan which had Italian football legends Billy Costacurta and José Altafini giving live commentary on the UEFA Champions League final match. What nobody in the pub knew was that Heineken had hidden cameras everywhere and that they had delayed the match broadcast by two minutes just so that people in the audience could upstage the legends by calling shots before they were even made. 😎
