The building blocks of Heineken’s successful positioning

For us Dutch people, Heineken is a fairly ordinary brand that competes with Grolsch and Jupiler for a spot in the Dutch shopping cart. In the rest of the world, the premium brand is famous, and even James Bond enjoys a Heineken beer. Much has already been written about the quality and brand strategy of the beer brand, but until recently, Heineken lagged far behind its international competitors. How did they turn the tide? And how can this be applied to the strategy and marketing of your own B2B organization?

In home markets Europe and North America, Heineken consumption declined, and in growth markets Asia and Africa, the company had little foothold. The beer market was a quantitative battle over liters of beer sold, and Heineken was certainly not in the lead. A change of course was necessary. Founder Freddy Heineken emphasized innovation, courage, and originality as building blocks, but what did that mean in this market? We discuss Heineken’s positioning per building block:

Innovation on your own strength – To gain a foothold in important growth markets and maintain profitability in the home market, something had to change. Heineken chose the premium (Heineken) brand strategy familiar to them. Not with one brand in one new market, but immediately with multiple brands. This is how Heineken conquers the Asian market by acquiring the brands Tiger and Kingfisher and positioning them together with its own Heineken beer as premium brands and unleashing their marketing machine on them. A bold but ultimately successful strategy. So successful that competitors had to follow, resulting in a permanently changed market. Your own organization also has a base of knowledge, brand awareness, expertise, or experience that no one else in the market possesses. Find a concrete application of this strength in your changing market and realize sustainable distinctive power.

Dare to embrace new tools and channels – The entire beer market mainly uses the old and trusted tools and channels where innovation is, for example, an extremely expensive Superbowl commercial. Heineken realizes that they need to go further and truly seek communication with the target audience. Heineken uses traditional means for activation but mainly uses new and social media to communicate with its target audience. Also in your market, there are new channels and tools that the vast majority have not yet used. You don’t have to completely throw out the old and trusted, but as a pioneer, you can explore interesting possibilities with a lower budget.

Originality, in message and behavior – Using new tools and channels does not only mean more contact with your target audience. By making people part of your brand experience, you must also dare to give up some control. While competitors mainly want to keep control over the brand, Heineken only tries to facilitate its target audience. The result is a strong brand with which people actively identify. Additionally, Heineken obtains a lot of data from the market. Knowledge about what really fits their target audience with the brand. This also applies in B2B. We do not claim that you must give up all control by definition, but your message must match your behavior. Walk the talk: don’t position yourself as an innovative and progressive company while forbidding your employees to share photos and stories online on social media.

Success of Heineken’s positioning

This resulted in excellent results for 2012 for Heineken. Where CEO Jean-François van Boxmeer was still using an ‘unfortunate’ acquisition strategy last year according to the Financial Times, he is now honored as top executive of the year, and Heineken is even considered the best company by managers! The core of the story is clear: dare to innovate and choose a completely unique course that fits the strength of your company.

Want to know more about positioning and how you can get started yourself? Read our page positioning and find there, besides in-depth articles, dozens of examples and models for every possible positioning challenge.