TURNING THE TABLE: Paolo Garcia

Paolo Garcia, Group Executive Creative Director of Publicis Groupe Vietnam. He is responsible for four communications brands: Leo Burnett, Publicis, Saatchi and Saatchi and MSL, and one of our 20 judges who helped select this year's winning entries. And the work! as Paolo says below:

I am thrilled to witness the ideas at Applied Arts Awards 2022. Because now, more than ever, the industry needs to champion groundbreaking creative work.  Especially at a time when everyone is going through their own personal challenges, they still managed to push for bold, engaging ideas. That's resilience and dedication in action—a key formula to pursuing an unmatched craft that is worthy of being recognized as the best in the industry.

Paolo shared one of his recent projects, a Heineken campaign that aired in Vietnam, aired? What are we saying?  The campaign blew up is more in keeping with the market reaction!

Having launched a new sleek can for their client, Heineken, the agency realized that this new can wasn't a big deal to young drinkers. The creatives wanted to send a signal that this was more than just a simple packaging change, it was a new experience.

The idea:

Heineken pioneered electronic music in Vietnam, the launch of their new can was the perfect opportunity to reignite this innovative spirit. The agency started with a simple observation. No matter what angle you look at the sleek can, only two letters of the brand name are visible. They asked themselves "What if we could find a way to let our drinkers play with these two-letter combinations and match them to the names of some of the hottest local and international artists?"

Leveraging their partnership with Spotify, gave the brand unprecedented access to a roster of artists that would have been impossible to sign individually. The experience was enabled by bespoke technology which included Letter Recognition AI and an AR algorithm that transformed every can into a personalized virtual concert. When users scanned the can, every turn of the logo unlocked an exciting new audio-visual experience. Seven two letter combinations allowed them to sync up with 583 famous singers and bands from every imaginable genre providing a remarkable and always surprising result with every turn. They also enabled their audience to add artists’ names that matched the two letters to create their own unique playlist, adding an additional layer of engagement to the campaign.

What were some unique features of the campaign?

What’s unique about the campaign is how we transformed a not so new news packaging launch into one of the most engaging campaigns of the year in Vietnam. By truly reimagining how a new packaging can also unlock fresh experiences by adding a new spin to AR and AI, it gave our drinkers more reasons to enjoy Heineken with music.

What were the success stats or indicators?

It was quite amazing when we looked at the data… In total, users spent 5,200,000 hours listening to Heineken-generated music tracks. From an engagement standpoint, we witnessed an unprecedented 546,000 shared playlists across social media platforms, which smashed all our expectations.

Why is this particular project a fave?

The ECD on this project, Rajapreyar Chandu, once said that there is no reference to a never-been-done innovative idea. But once we pull it off, we become the reference. And I think that mindset is what drives us to keep exploring the unknown. For it to get the recognition it deserves was the icing on the cake.

Inspiring words: a mindset that drives us to keep "Exploring the unknown"! Thank you Paolo for the inspiration and for sharing your work with us!