Media Central has won the second Collaborate to Innovate initiative which forms part of Heineken Ireland’s Media Innovation Programme. The programme was launched by Heineken Ireland last year to maximise the performance of its media work, and resulted in some of the brand’s most successful, collaborative media campaigns ever.
This year, Media Central was amongst 63 entries, from 37 media owners, battling it out to win a valuable media partnership with Heineken Ireland. Media Central’s entry was a creative media campaign idea for Desperados, the Heineken-owned tequila flavoured beer. The campaign will be aired this Summer across the network’s stations which include 98FM, SpinFM, Spin South West, Beat, iRadio, and 4FM. As part of the prize, the team at Media Central received a trip to the Champions League Final!
Collaborate to Innovate is an initiative that allows media owners pitch innovative, ‘never done before’ ideas for Heineken Ireland’s portfolio of brands which includes Heineken, Orchard Thieves, Coors Light and Desperados among others. The programme includes immersive briefing events where the company’s marketing team, alongside its media agency Starcom, delivers a briefing experience for media owners.
“Each year, true media innovation gets harder to achieve. To address this we needed to develop a really immersive briefing process to bring out the best from Ireland’s media owners. Great ideas stem from great briefs. We created a new approach to ensure that we produce best-in-class media strategies fuelled by creative and insightful thinking that positions our consumers at the heart of every communications strategy and allows the media owners to really shine” according to Tiernan O’Morain, head of digital and media at Heineken;
“Last year the programme delivered incredible partnership work and this year, with the team at Media Central, we have an exceptionally exciting programme that we hope will push innovation even further to delight our brand fans,” he says.
Gavin Deans, MD of Media Central, said; “It’s rare that we get an opportunity like this. The immersion and briefing process allowed us fully understand the brand, the team and the fast-changing beer and cider consumers and then apply our expert knowledge of what today’s audiences want through our channels. Creatively we were let loose and, with adequate time to collaborate with our talented team, we have come up with a campaign that we’re incredibly motivated and excited to deliver.”
