Heineken Just Punked People With the First Beer Made for the Metaverse
Welcome to marketing in 2022, when brands are rushing to enter the metaverse and launch products and experiences that don’t exist in the real world.
Heineken is the latest advertiser to jump on the metaverse bandwagon. Today it launched its first metaverse beer, Heineken Silver, a virtual beverage that you can’t taste.
Heineken Silver is available exclusively through the immersive digital platform Decentraland and “brewed with Binary Coded Hops grown by NPC (non-player character) farmers,” according to the brand. “Our special A-yeast, usually brewed in horizontal tanks, has been replaced with A-Pixels.”
It turns out it’s all a joke, however, as Heineken’s campaign is a light-hearted jab at brands’ obsession with the metaverse and reminds people that nothing can replace the experience of drinking a real beer.
Brewed with pixels
The company unveiled Heineken Silver at a digital press conference held in Decentraland on March 17. Attendees were invited to create their own avatar prior to entering Heineken’s virtual brewery.
On stage, a voiceover introduced the new beer: “With no calories, no hidden ingredients and no beer. Try… to try it now.”
Then an avatar of global head of the Heineken brand Bram Westenbrink — wearing a glowing silver-toned suit — appeared on the virtual stage to explain the thinking behind Heineken Silver:
“Bringing the brewing innovation to a whole new dimension — the digital dimension,” he said, adding that the creation was “a combination of a large quantity of pixels, a dash of coding and many tireless nights of programming.”
The Westenbrink avatar then summoned an avatar of Willem van Waesberghe, Heineken’s star master brewer, to describe the taste profile of Heineken Silver.
The beverage is brewed with millions of pixels, filtered with super-fast megabytes and through the very best firewalls. It doesn’t get more innovative than brewing a beer in the metaverse, It would taste great if you could drink it.”~ van Waesberghe
After the press conference, guests of Heineken’s virtual brewery could explore the space, learn how the beer is made “in mere seconds,” enjoy pixelated lobster and caviar and meet an avatar of Heineken brand ambassador and soccer star Thierry Henry. There was also a virtual DJ and dancers dressed in Heineken gear.
Spanish street artist J. Demsky designed parts of Heineken’s virtual world, while Publicis Italy and Le Pub created the campaign.
“[Heineken Silver] is a self-aware idea that pokes fun at us and many other brands that are jumping into the metaverse with products that are best enjoyed in the real world,” Westenbrink said in a statement. “For now, you can’t taste pixels and bytes. So we want to make a joke about that and remind everyone that nothing beats the taste of a refreshing beer, including our new virtual Heineken Silver, in the real world.”
