Heineken's Drink OR Drive Initiative a BIC Success

6/02/2017 Anonymous 0 Comments


On the hottest day of the coldest May in memory, three BIC teams presented their CSR campaigns to Heineken USA at the BIC capstone Client Pitch. HUSA brand manager Katharine Preville, Manager of Alcohol Policy & Government Affairs Donna Hawes Saunders, APCO Creative Director Howard Pulchin, and APCO Director Tina Kaiser were joined remotely by SVP Chief Corporate Relations Officer Tara Rush to judge the event. Heineken is the world's most international brewer. Among its many corporate social responsibility efforts, HUSA seeks to create communities of Responsible Citizens by encouraging and rewarding them to make better decisions by focusing on moderate consumption of its brands and knowing how to choose between drinking or driving.


--> Earlier in the semester, HUSA challenged the students to "change the conversation" and uncouple the words "drinking" and "driving" in order to decreased the impact of alcohol related car accidents. Then the BIC team competition kicked into high gear.

Team Mosaic pitched their strategic campaign "Drink or Drive... and Open Your Night" which built off of HUSA's current tagline "Open Your World. " Their strategy asked consumers to unburden their night from decision-making by taking a moment earlier in the day to commit to a "micro-choice." The reward would be a night of spontaneity -- more fun and responsibility-free. Anchored in an "invitation only" event, the campaign began with key influencers who helped consumers make the decision.


Team Polaris focused on three key cities where DUI incidents are below the national average. Their "Welcome to a Post-DUI World" celebrated the innovation and choices already being made by city dwellers and then leveraged those smart choices to keep the momentum going in the right direction. The campaign included a competition among the mayors of New York, Houston, and Atlanta as they competed for even lower DUI numbers and increased innovation.



Team Prizm noted that while DUIs had fallen since the 1950's, the numbers had plateaued. Their research led them to believe that the established language of drinking responsibly had become wallpaper and needed new clarity in order to be effective. Their campaign "Zero=Zero" made sure there was no ambiguity when people were making the decision to drink or drive -- if you choose to drive, you cannot have ANY drinks. Using traditional media with existing language, the campaign included breakthrough ways of replacing ambiguity with clarity, always ending with "Zero=Zero. Drink or drive. Never both."

After a rigorous Q&A session, client judges deliberated for more than an hour and a half in 90 degree heat before deciding that their choice for winning campaign was...all three!

The BIC Corporate Capstone is overseen by Professor and Program Director Nancy Tag. Building off of expertise cultivated in the Fall Non-Profit Capstone, three BIC teams work on a corporate client brief to solve communications challenges. Previous corporate partners have been Universal Music Group and Univision.