Why Heineken Group Made a Drink That’s Hard to Swallow

After research revealed that women still face severe inequity in the workplace - a lack of female leaders, safe working conditions, and professional development opportunities - Heineken Group teamed up with Dentsu Creative Brazil to make its leaders, and leaders around the world, swallow some hard truths.

For this corporate campaign, Brazil’s second largest brewery and the agency invented a foul-tasting, non-alcoholic beverage, called Lidera (leader), designed to reflect women’s negative workplace experiences. They then filmed Heineken Group leaders’ reaction to the taste, as well as the statistics from the research which were displayed on the custom purple cans as the ‘ingredients’.

The goal was to help the group’s leaders - and other leadership teams in the market - reflect on what still needs to be transformed, and inspire each other to collaborate and strengthen their diversity, equity, and gender inclusion agendas together.

Speaking to LBB’s Ben Conway, Ricardo Dolla, chief creative officer of Dentsu Creative Brazil, says that while the numbers from the research sadly didn't surprise him, what truly alarmed him was Brazil's position compared to other nations. “It's shameful that we find ourselves in this situation.”

However, there is hope ahead. In 2021, the Heineken Group in Brazil publicly committed to having women hold 50% of its leadership positions by 2026, and female representation in these positions has grown by more than 7% in the last three years already. This, says Ricardo, emboldened them to create this campaign, assembling an all-female team from both Dentsu Creative and the Heineken Group corporate team to carry it out. 

Sharing that the primary focus of the project’s brief wasn't to assign blame but to show support for women in the ongoing struggle for equality, the CCO explains that the resulting creative prompt was a simple question: ‘What if the workplace for women had a flavour?’. 

“Of course, given that Heineken is in the beverage industry, the concept of taste naturally came to mind,” says Ricardo. “However, the main objective was to flip the usual approach of experimenting with something new, which is often a positive event - but not in the case of the Lidera drink.

To develop and manufacture the actual Lidera product, he explains that the creatives envisioned scenarios where imbalances in the ingredients would render the final product unpalatable. “To achieve this, we utilised data from the Brazilian market for women and extrapolated those values to the ingredients, leading us to a flavour that was genuinely disgusting.”

“Essentially, we increased the elements that made it bad and decreased those that contributed to its appeal,” he adds. “Ultimately, this serves as a perfect metaphor for the landscape of Brazilian women in the workplace.”

The unique purple can was also chosen because the colour is associated with the fight for women’s rights. Dentsu Creative Brazil’s art director and designer Hannah Prado shares that the design links the experiment with its solutions, and visually presents the key issues and reality facing women; information around gender market share, maternity layoffs, harassment and more.

“The design started with the purpose to look like any other product from Heineken’s catalogue - but with details as special as its taste. The structural design was based on the usual elements of beverage cans: a logo, a description of ingredients and an exclusivity stamp.” However, she says, “It also carried an invitation directed to the leaders that were drinking it, explaining the experiment, inviting them to know more about Heineken Group initiatives, and of course, a reflection to take action on the fight for equal gender rights.”

“Since Heineken Group is part of the market, we thought it would be good for them to play both roles,” adds Ricardo. “The role of shedding light on the subject and the role of being part of the subject.” This led the team to create a film showing Heineken Group leaders reacting to the drink, and the information on its packaging.

What struck Ricardo most during this stage of production was that some of the leaders instinctively tried to pretend that the taste wasn't bad. “I thought it was an irony that well represents the way we men deal with truths,” he says.

Looking at the campaign’s wider impact, Ricardo notes that ‘Hard Truths to Swallow’ isn’t just a one-off internal corporate activation, but a project that has opened up this vital conversation in a way that furthers the brand’s existing progress towards workplace equity, and may even extend to the brand’s partners too. “Heineken Group has already undertaken numerous internal marketing initiatives in this direction. The added dimension here is the scrutiny of the market and the call for other companies to align with Heineken's objectives,” he says. 

“When companies acknowledge the issue and take steps to address it, that's a clear indication of successful communication.”