Winning at Cannes – Heineken’s success

Heineken was the standout Irish success at this year’s Cannes Lions, taking home 22 accolades across 11 categories with eight of these - four gold and four silver – being awarded in the B2B category for the Pub Museums campaign. Here, we hear from some of the team behind this initiative and what it took to get there.

Fiona Curtin, Marketing Director of Heineken® Ireland

With our eight Cannes Lion awards safely back home in Ireland, we made time this week to celebrate the wins with the whole team and our interagency group - the energy is infectious.

Cannes is such a highlight on the global marketing calendar. Everyone wants to be there, and more importantly, everyone wants to win. This year, Heineken enjoyed remarkable success with Heineken® Ireland delivering 4 Gold Cannes Lions and 4 Silvers. Being ranked the first alcohol brand in the festival is something we’re celebrating in each Heineken market around the world.

Pub Museums really captured the imagination of the Jurors over many categories and our Pub Museums initiative, which was delivered by my colleagues here at Heineken Ireland, in partnership with our agency partners Publicis Dublin, Le Pub Milan and Thinkhouse.

Heineken has, for generations, encouraged sociability and breaking down barriers that prevent people from coming together to enjoy each other’s company. Our Pub Museums initiative is a perfect example of putting a spotlight on the sociability of our iconic Irish pubs – a place synonymous with connecting and sharing stories over a refreshing beer. It’s pretty special, with this initiative, to be able to help our Pub Museum partners tell their own story, while also supporting them to preserve their heritage for future generations to enjoy.

Our wins in Cannes are testament to the company’s longstanding commitment to creativity from brief to execution. It’s a showcase of the phenomenal agency partnerships we have with Publicis, Le Pub and Thinkhouse. To our team of exceptional marketers, this win builds further momentum, and belief in our collective creative potential. We're so proud.

Jane McDaid, Founder & Head of Creative Innovation, THINKHOUSE

reland is so hot right now. I said this recently, when I spoke at Google HQ as part of Enterprise Ireland and IAPI’s event on artificial intelligence. And I’ll say it again now. Ireland’s performance at Cannes this year demonstrates that we are a country to be reckoned with when it comes to excellence in creativity, now and into the future. I think the time has come for Ireland to stand up, with courage and confidence, to position ourselves as the world’s most exciting beacon of innovation and creativity.

This was my overwhelming sense, and motivation, as I left a busy, and sweaty, week in the company of creatives, brands and tech companies from all over the world.

At Thinkhouse, we’re pretty new to the world of Cannes Lions awards, so with the expertise and collaborative spirit of Publicis Dublin and Le Pub, this was an impressive achievement. The awards reflects the talent of the interagency team, and our longstanding partner, Heineken Ireland. I’m really proud of the team that has built this agency into what it is today, and what it’s becoming. As a B Corp certified company, and one of the newly announced 2024 Government of Ireland’s Sustainable Development Goals Champions, we’re proud to be among a new breed of agencies, activists and organisations that is outspoken and ambitious about our industry reaching its real, and creative, potential - to use business, and marketing, as a force for good. That’s what makes this really important to me - Pub Museums was an initiative, much more than just a brilliant creative campaign. That’s the kind of impact, and brand momentum, we’re here for.

Ger Roe, Board Creative Director, Publicis Dublin

eing selected as an awarding judge in Cannes is a huge honour, especially when you consider that you’re chosen out of thousands. When the work Publicis Dublin and Le Pub entered with Heineken got shortlisted, that meant I also needed to do a live presentation of our work to another jury. We then went on to win in some of the categories that we were shortlisted in. Experiencing any one of these three things is amazing – I was lucky enough to experience all three in Cannes 2024. The entire experience will live long in my memory.