Zero percent
Heineken announced that its 0.0% brand will become the new official sponsor of the Europa League – an elite(ish) European competition in which formerly good teams (i.e. Manchester United) largely take on teams from collapsed Soviet states.
The €10m-a-year move is the ‘the largest ever single sponsorship deal involving a non-alcoholic beer brand’ and sees Heineken 0.0% replace Amstel.
The move reflects two things, firstly that there is a rapidly growing alcohol-free market powered by ‘Can’t-ers’ and ‘Don’t Want-ers’ who are aiming to reduce alcohol consumption. Secondly, football is ubiquitous on our television screens with matches aired most days. Advertisers cannot easily encourage customers to ‘drink responsibly’ whilst encouraging customers to drink beer with football, which these days is a bit like saying ‘drink lots and often’. A great move.
Rotten to the Corps.
Big bad wolf Apple is suing Prepear, an 11-year-old food blog, as apparently its pear logo is too similar to Apple’s apple logo despite the fact it is completely different, a different colour and more closely resembles a pear.
Thankfully, Prepear founder Natalie Monson feels a moral obligation to fight back and her petition already has 63,000 signatures. You can sign it to support here.
Code and Response
Ahead of its recent Code and Response campaign, IMB noticed that it was losing the confidence of developers and consistently scoring below competitors in key areas.
Great campaigns often start with a problem that needs solving. In an article for The Drum, the team behind last year’s highly commended campaign discussed the strategy behind the project that hosted the world’s biggest hackathon “to use technology to address natural disaster preparedness and recovery and ultimately help save lives”.
If you’re a bit of a marketing geek you can read more here, but at its heart, this campaign shows how creativity, innovation and thinking outside the box can often provide greater success than conventional marketing routes.
Blockbuster’s brief return
And finally, corporate Rip Van Winkle, Blockbuster Video, has emerged from its six-year slumber to find that the world has changed somewhat.
The former home-media rental giant tweeted for the first time since 2014, simply saying: “Just checking in.” Later the same day, it had had enough adding: “Ok, we’ve seen enough. Checking out.”
The cameo comes as Blockbuster joins up with Airbnb to host a 90s themed sleepover at its last remaining store (it’s in Oregon, apparently). Very clever use of Twitter there!