I have a confession to make. I’m not much of a beer drinker. The country in which I was raised is ranked very low on the world rankings for beer consumption, and even among my fellow countrymen I have never been a keen drinker in comparison. It took me many years to really be able to enjoy beer and find the type that I like, and even after all that – I still only drink socially as if under coercion. “Who cares?”, you might ask. Well, when hanging out with American and especially western-European folks socializing is based on drinking alcohol, and beer is definitely a key element. During my visit to Amsterdam it was clear that beyond mushrooms and pot beer is the national hang-out hobby, and so it’s no surprise that some of the world’s best known beer brands originate from the Netherlands. Namely, and most prominently – Heineken.
Being the good tourist that I am, I made my way to the Heineken Experience to take part in a brain-washing PR journey into the world of Heineken and beer-making. From start to finish, it’s an advertising attack on your senses, much more so than any other brewery that I’ve visited before. Although beer sometimes tends to focus on sports and half-naked party girls, the Heinekens seem to recently try and aim for something slightly more sophisticated. Sure, they’ll sponsor national sports events, but the advertisements that they project onto your eyeballs usually involve more of the life-experience attitude. Though I could be wrong.
Head down to the museum area, and a block or two away you’ll find the Heineken factory looking building.
Once you enter…
You’ll go into a few rooms explaining things about the process of making beer…
And you’ll get to see some of the key materials in brewing beer…
transporting it…
and selling it…
You can get your own bottle made…
And then play around with all sorts of colorful interactive games that connect you to the Heineken brand.
Just imagine people coming from all over the world to your museum to be seated down in machines that would show them non-stop commercials of your brand and that – on top of it all – they’ll enjoy it and tell their friends and family they had a blast. How brilliant would it be to be able to pull something like that off?
So, yep, we learned a thing or two about the process of making beer, the process of consuming beer (2 free drink vouchers and another free tour toast can get a no-drinker like me rocking), and the process of having a brand name imprinted in your brains for eternity. An afternoon well-spent, no doubt.