Asia Pacific Breweries Ltd. : HEINEKEN Asia Pacific ‘Have a Good Night Out’ regional responsible drinking campaign wins Bronze for CSR Excellence at Marketing Excellence Awards

NEWS RELEASE HEINEKEN Asia Pacific 'Have a Good Night Out' regional responsible drinking campaign wins Bronze for CSR Excellence at Marketing Excellence Awards

15 November 2013

HEINEKEN Asia Pacific 'Have a Good Night Out' regional responsible drinking campaign wins Bronze for CSR Excellence at Marketing Excellence Awards

Heineken Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. (HEINEKEN Asia Pacific) today announced that the company won the Bronze Award in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Excellence at Tuesday's Marketing Excellence Awards.

The Marketing Excellence Awards is Singapore's premier event celebrating excellence across the marketing communications services spectrum, recognising organisations that have pushed their brand(s) towards measurable success, through sound and innovative marketing strategies.

HEINEKEN Asia Pacific's Drink Savvy platform (launched in December 2009 when it was known as Asia Pacific Breweries Limited) is the first website by an Asian brewer to educate and engage consumers on well-informed and responsible decisions about drinking alcohol. Central to Drink-Savvy.com is a robust consumer engagement platform that is refreshed annually to keep regional consumers engaged on responsible consumption.

For the fourth year running, Drink Savvy launched an interactive, humourous and fun campaign. Titled 'How to Have a Good Night Out', this year's campaign featured a series of six tongue-in-cheek animated "lessons" or tips on how one can drink responsibly, to relate to and encourage consumers in Asia Pacific to cultivate a positive attitude towards drinking alcohol.

Over the ten-week campaign period (18 March to 29 May 2013), the 'Lessons' videos were viewed more than 1.1 million times across Asia Pacific on the campaign website and popular social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. The refreshing campaign more than doubled public participation from last year; over 7,600 entries were received from young people between 18 to 30 years old took part in the online video contest and quiz.  The videos were then shared almost two million times by contest participants and web visitors during the same period. Our Facebook community grew twice as large this year with more than 16,000 new fans that 'liked' and talked to us about their drinking habits and preferences.

Mr. Roland Pirmez, President of HEINEKEN Asia Pacific, commented on the award win: "As one of the world's leading brewers, we recognize the need as a responsible brewer to actively promote and engage our consumers to make smart choices about drinking alcohol while enjoying good nights out. I am delighted by the viral public participation online across the Asia Pacific region. I believe their enthusiastic support to spread the message of enjoying our beers responsibly is a key attribute to the success of this campaign and to Drink Savvy winning its first award in CSR Excellence."

"Advocating responsible consumption continues to be a clear and on-going priority in our sustainability journey. We will keep on investing and upgrading our efforts to promote and engage our consumers to develop positive drinking habits and influence their peers to do the same," added Mr Pirmez.

The Marketing Excellence Awards was held on 12 November, Tuesday, at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Singapore. A panel of 16 distinguished industry professionals were the judges for this event. The Gold for CSR Excellence was won by MasterCard and the Silver by Olam International. Other finalists which were in the running for this award included Standard Chartered Bank, Unilever, and RHB Banking Group together with The Straits Times.