Heineken®

The Objective

Real-life meetups with the true social network

fter spending so many hours a day staring at screens, how about unplugging for a bit and going out to enjoy real life? That was the challenge Heineken® wanted to present to the TikTok community, reinforcing the idea that the best meetups and interactions can happen beyond the feed—preferably at a bar, over a Heineken®.

Heineken® wanted to leverage TikTok to amplify this conversation, positioning itself as the “true social network” and inviting the community to look away from their screens for a moment. The goal was to boost brand awareness and build brand consideration, ultimately driving conversion through a 360-degree campaign.

The Solution

From upper funnel to middle funnel

Heineken® developed a long-term, content-rich strategy to turn an inspiring message into strong results. Working with the Dentsu Creative agency, the brand combined media solutions and creativity to target both the upper and middle funnel over the course of nearly 6 months, ensuring scale and variety without losing the authenticity that helps the community connect with the campaign.

The creative element was provided by a partner that Heineken® recruited via TikTok Partner Exchange, formerly known as TTCX. Spark connected the brand with an entire team of content creators, who helped fuel the campaign with volume and creative diversity—multiple different stories based on the same concept, featuring real-life meetups centered around the “true social network” that is Heineken®.

Through Partner Exchange, the brand also secured support to repurpose this content and achieve even greater variety. Thus, in practice, it managed to combine short creatives—focused on grabbing the audience’s attention in the first few seconds—with more complete stories about meetups among friends, always reinforcing that the best part of the experience happens with the “true social network.”

The content was amplified using Spark Ads, directly from the content creators' profiles. But the major strategic differentiator came from the brand's special focus on the middle funnel with Brand Consideration Ads. This new format, which comes with TikTok Market Scope, added an extra layer of efficiency to the campaign. With it, the ads and the brand's message reached people who were already in the awareness phase and more likely to move on to the consideration stage of the purchase journey.

Potential consumers in this stage of the marketing funnel are key to brand building and generating even more incremental ROI. They have a conversion rate up to 16x higher than that of potential customers still in the awareness phase, and also deliver better incremental results in Brand Lift Studies.(1)

The results

Here's to real-life connections (and incremental sales)

The strategy, which combined a high volume and variety of creative assets with a consistent brand presence, not only generated buzz but also proved its value in terms of consumer desire and sales. A multi-cell Brand Lift Study conducted by the brand showed that the Brand Consideration Ads campaign resulted in a 4.7-point incremental increase in purchase intent.

This increased intent was reflected in the shopping carts: a Sales Lift Study conducted by our certified measurement partner LiveRamp revealed that the campaign delivered:

• +18.33% incremental sales

• 3.69 incremental ROAS (iROAS)

In other words, in addition to selling more, the brand achieved an additional R$3.69 in return on ad spend (ROAS) from the campaign, thanks to the strategy.

The standout point here was the power of Brand Consideration Ads.

In the multi-cell Brand Lift Study, the strategy without this format had no impact whatsoever on purchase intent. And in the Sales Lift Study, the creatives promoted using this solution accounted for 26% of the total increase in sales, even though they reached only 16% of buyers. Thus, they contributed the most among all the creatives used in the campaign.

Furthermore, the audience that moved from the awareness stage to the consideration stage had a 92% higher conversion efficiency than the campaign average. See how much higher the conversion rate can be?

By combining videos designed to deepen consideration with a purpose-built solution, Heineken® reinforced its message and proved that building brand and culture on TikTok generates a real—and measurable—impact on the business.

Source: (1) TikTok Market Scope Analysis, SEA, Feb-Mar 2025.