Heineken’s hunt for the right candidate is great PR

A lot of the time, consumer PRs spend their lives coming up with ways to make intrinsically boring things interesting. Polishing, buffing, inventing to make newsworthy.

By and large we gloss things, often to the point that the thing under the gloss is barely distinguishable (though that is a debate for another day).

So when I saw this little clip, I had to smile.

For those of you who couldn't be bothered to watch the whole thing, The candidate follows one Heineken graduate trainee's journey through some surreal tasks to eventually land a job with the brewer.

And it made me grin because it's a campaign that has gone inside the brand to find its interest point.

The campaign identified a bit of a weak spot in the brand and went out to patch it.

For Heineken, it’s that people don’t really understand the business or have any insight at all into what the company is like – in a world where we love brands and businesses as much for who they are and their approach as we do for the products they create.

So doing something that taps into a situation that so many of their drinkers can identify with – the graduate trainee and internship interview – to deliver a sense of the company culture through entertaining branded content is a move that has clearly delivered against the brief.

With over three million views to date (admittedly a decent number of those through paid seeding if a quick review of placement is anything to go by), the work is getting as much engagement and coverage as any brand ad. What’s more, it’s getting people to engage with the business behind the global super-brand and is making Heineken just a wee bit more appealing to their core audience.

As an example of what creativity can do to bring some understanding of what goes on in what could otherwise be a faceless brand, this is a lovely piece of work.

James Gordon-MacIntosh is founder and Managing Partner at Hope&Glory PR.