I am blessed with a wife and two daughters whom I love far more than is fiscally sound. In 2001, I broke down and took them all on a European cruise. The trip cost us a small fortune, but has more than paid us back by providing some of our happiest family memories.
If you ever find yourself in Amsterdam, you must visit two of the sights we took in. The first one is a no-brainer: the tour of Anne Frank’s House will absolutely move you. The second will delight you: the “Heineken Experience” is an interactive tour of all things beery that leaves one belching in satisfaction.
Virtually every beer brand of any consequence offers brewery tours. These usually consist of some historical exhibits along with a lecture on how each firm brews its beer. The highlight of any such tour is the visit to the “Tasting Room” where those of legal drinking age are encouraged to sample a glass or three of the different types of beers made by the host. “The bars are the second-most popular aspect of the Heineken Experience,” according to Justus Kesler, the tour’s controller.
American breweries have traditionally offered consumers their tours at little or no cost, both as a gesture of goodwill and a terrific sampling/loyalty generator. Imagine my surprise when we arrived at the Heineken plant to discover a charge of 7.50 euros per person ($9.06 each at current rates). We had walked all the way from Anne Frank’s house, so I wasn’t too happy over the cost of admission, but figured we might as well go in.
Having presented my much-abused American Express card for yet more charges, we were issued a set of long tickets that each had four tear-off stubs. My mood changed dramatically for the better when I discovered that three of the stubs on each ticket read “FREE BEER” in English (I am able to both read and speak “free beer” fluently in a number of tongues).
The fourth and final stub on each ticket read “FREE GIFT.” Having been overcharged on virtually everything else in Holland to that point, my expectations for the gift dwelt at about the keychain level. That was okay I figured, because there was no way they could take away my free beer.
With that in mind we started our self-guided tour. True to form, it started with the history of the brewery. For the record, Heineken has made beer at that location since 1867. They stopped making beer there in 1988, when the plant was converted into the Heineken Experience museum and production shifted to the suburbs. The museum averages 1,200 visitors per day in the key tourism months, and approximately 800 visitors per day the rest of the year.
At one point in the tour, we came to a room that had an elevated platform facing a blank movie screen, with a series of parallel grab bars at waist height. This was “The Bottle Ride,” where we would experience what it feels like to go through the Heineken production facility from the perspective of a beer bottle. Since this exhibit occurred before we’d had the free beer experience, I was not quite yet in my happy place. I figured this was, not to put too sharp a point on it, a load of crap. It goes without saying that it was terrific!
The platform we were on tilted back and forth and side to side, and as crazy as it sounds, it really felt like you were physically traveling down the bottling line yourself. I’ve never before been on a ride that so thoroughly absorbed both my imagination and my body. “It’s the best-liked attraction of the tour,” Herr Kessler says, outranking even the free beer.
A trifle rubber-legged from this attraction, we staggered to the first of two promised lands: “de Bierkelder” or beer cellar. This wide and spacious area had several different stations where lovely attendants were pouring a choice of fresh Heineken or Amstel Light into signature-style beer glasses. After two beers and a delightful tour of some old Heineken advertising, my worldview of Holland and the Dutch improved immeasurably.
The next room had a lot of high-tech interactive exhibits that my daughters were interested in, but left me rather adrift. (I once won the Fred Flintstone Award in my company for Best Avoidance of 20th Century Technology.) We didn’t linger long in this spot.
The second-to-last attraction was the Heineken gift shop. Gift shops are one of the great things about any plant tour, and we bought our share of T-shirts and European style mugs. I recall debating with my wife whether to buy a set of four of the nifty little glasses we’d been drinking from, but we decided sadly that we couldn’t adequately protect them during the rest of our travels.
Next to the gift shop was the final attraction; a comfy little room with multiple tap heads where you could redeem the balance of your free beer stubs. By this time my daughters had had their margin of brew, so they donated their stubs to their father, who possesses a near infinite capacity.
It should come as no surprise that after quickly downing 30 ounces of Herr Heineken’s freshest, I was in a more than passing need of the men’s.
I left my wife and daughters to redeem their free gift stubs while I freshened up, only to return moments later to a family grinning from ear to ear. After checking both shoes for toilet tissue and ascertaining that I had in fact zipped up, I asked what was so funny. “Just get your gift,” they chorused.
I walked up to a window labeled appropriately enough, “FREE GIFT,” where I handed in my final stub for a beautiful little six-inch-high round tin decorated all over with bright green Heineken graphics.
“Open it!” my family shouted. In the tin, surrounded by a wall of corrugate, was the 10-ounce sampling glass.
“The gift was designed because we thought it communicated very well what Heinken stands for,” Herr Kesler says. “About 15% of the cost of admission is spent on the free gift.”
The quality of this parting gesture, costing about $1.83, based on the current 10-euro admission fee, doesn’t go unnoticed by consumers according to Kesler, “92% of visitors state that they appreciate the free gift and 55% rate it highly in post-tour notes.”
Personally, I haven’t been so touched by a gesture since the time I opened up my first package of Army C-Rations to discover that they’d included four cigarettes, two Chiclets, matches and toilet paper with each meal. The free gift turned out to be worth more than the price of admission. From that moment on I became a huge fan of Heineken and I still am today.
“We are like a major advertising sign for the company, intended both to increase the consumers’ brand preference and their sympathy for our company,” says Meint van Kulken, Heineken’s experience manager.
Both daughters have their own homes now. Like their mother and me, they use their Heineken glasses to drink their morning juice. They’re the perfect size for juice, and of course, they always bring a smile to our faces just remembering our wonderful Heineken Experience.
Rod Taylor is the senior VP-promotion for CoActive Marketing, Cincinnati, OH. You can reach him at [email protected] to suggest your own favorite promotional campaigns from yesteryear.
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