Guys Bribe Their Girlfriends to Watch Soccer Alone in Heineken Ad With an Awesome Twist – Adweek

What if you had the perfect excuse to watch the UEFA Champions League Final at an epic Heineken party … without your girlfriend?

That’s the setup in Heineken’s latest stunt for soccer fans. One week before the UEFA Champions League Final in Milan, Heineken targeted a handful of guys out at dinner in São Paulo with their girlfriends. When the guys opened the menus, they were met with a surprising message:

Would you like to be free to watch the UEFA Champions League Final at a Heineken party? Gift your lady a weekend at this spa.

What follows is a long, comic silence, after which the guys try adapting the message for their skeptical girlfriends as if they’d planned it all along. One lays it on thick, claiming he did a huge amount of research. 

“You want to get rid of me?” a girlfriend asks incredulously.

“Look how stressed you are,” her dude responds. “You need some time for you!” 

It’s classic, in keeping with the kinds of stunts and messaging Heineken has become known for—surprising and rewarding mostly male soccer fans to build on the idea that Heineken is your own personal beer buddy, as keen on the sport as you are. 

We’re all for boys just wanting to have fun, but for women, the asymmetry can be irritating. (Why couldn’t they just tell them?) That irritation builds as the ladies take the bait and our trio of heroes skip off to party town, where a cheering crowd, a big-screen TV and beers await them. The guys cozy up under a #ChampionTheMatch banner, clinking glasses in celebration of their little caper.

But the ad ain’t over yet.

The guys faces are priceless as they absorb the surprise, followed by the moral of this little Aesop’s fable: “Have you ever considered that she might like football as much as you do?” (You know this already, but soccer is actually football elsewhere in the world.) 

The guys clap to their own dupe, sportsmanlike to the end. And in exchange for being such loveable cads, the women tell them to peep under their seats. Aww… tickets to Champions League 2017. This time they’ll all go together. 

Created by Publicis, “The Cliché” provides a different kind of gratification that reflects an evolution in couples culture as-seen-on-TV, one in which both partners win in equal measure, and no single sex is so easily had. And while we take it for granted that there’s stuff our dudes would rather do without us (and vice versa), the ad’s real message is that these divides don’t have to be determined by blanket cultural stereotypes about what your partner will or won’t enjoy. 

Those divides go both ways. We’re pretty sure that, after discovering their kick-ass soccer weekend has been grossly overshadowed by their girlfriends’, our fallen-from-grace protagonists would be open to a spa treatment, if only to massage away all that pwnage.

CREDITS

Cliente: Heineken

Agência: Publicis

Direção de criação: Hugo Rodrigues, Kevin Zung e Alexandre (Xã) Vilela

Direção de arte: Henrique Mattos, Cícero Souza, Guto Kono

Redação: Pedro Lazera, Mariana Albuquerque, Samuel Normando

Atendimento: Danilo Ken, Daniel Batista e Marina Roge

Planejamento: Eduardo Lorenzi, Alexandra Varassin, Rafael Fiorito e Leonardo Andrade

Social strategist: Tiago Martinez

Mídia: Gracieli Beraldi, Giuliana Barletta e Nicolas Lana

RTVC: Tato Bono, Dani Toda

Produtora: Hungry Man

Diretor: Caio Rubini e Fabio Pinheiro

Managing Partner: Alex Mehedff

Produtor executivo: Rodrigo Castello e Renata Corrêa

Line Producer: Mariana Marinho

Diretor de fotografia: Felipe Meneghel

Equipe de produção: Hungry Man

Supervisor de Pós-Produção: Rodrigo Oliveira

Pós-Produção: Efecktor

Montador: Thiago Ceruti

Color Granding: Psycho N’Look

Produtora de áudio: Jamute