A new Heineken campaign seeks to pull people out of long voice notes and into real conversations.
The ‘Could have been a Heineken’ campaign by LePub Milan and São Paulo for Heineken Brazil describes itself as ‘a new WhatsApp technology that swaps voice notes for real life conversations over a beer’.
WhatsApp users who receive voice notes over three-minutes long can forward the message to a Heineken bot and get a voucher for a free beer, as well as a recommendation for a local bar in which to redeem it.
‘Long voice messages have become a familiar part of everyday communication, as conversations that carry the energy of a real catch-up, but often stay trapped on a screen,’ said LePub Milan creative director Gaston Soto. ‘Heineken saw this as a symbol of how social life is increasingly happening digitally, sometimes at the expense of real-world experiences.
‘Creatively, the idea was to take a behaviour everyone recognises and flip it into an invitation to reconnect in person. By turning a digital habit into a social trigger, the campaign reinforces Heineken’s long-standing belief that social life is at its best when it expands beyond routines, screens, and familiar circles, ideally over a beer.’
More than half of people surveyed worldwide by Heineken felt that voice notes ‘are replacing IRL connections’. The brand opted to launch the campaign in Brazil because Brazilians ‘send four times as many voice notes’ as people in any other country, according to data from Meta.
As online communication moves from public feeds to private messaging forums, brands must look for new ways to become a part of their conversations. In MediaCat UK’s 2025 Annual, We Are Social’s head of research, Paul Greenwood, said that closed messaging groups are ‘going to become more and more important’ for brands in 2026. ‘We’re trying to figure out how a really good idea can travel into that space because people will still take content from social and share it somewhere else,’ he added.
Heineken’s promotion presents one way for brands to cross the barrier into those so-called dark spaces. Once consumers have reached out to Heineken for the voucher, the bot will remain in their contacts, giving Heineken an opportunity to contact them with further promotions.
Meta, too, is looking to WhatsApp as an increasing source of advertising revenue. In Q3 2025, Meta described business messaging as ‘a significant opportunity’ that had driven much of the company’s 59% year-on-year growth in ‘other revenue’.
Heineken’s campaign in Brazil was accompanied by OOH billboards and ads on social media to make people aware of the bot.
In a statement, Heineken said that it would expand the ‘Could Have Been A Heineken’ format to other markets, following the pilot in Brazil.
Brazil represents 10% of Heineken’s global operating income. In Q3 2025, the brewer reported that organic net revenue in the country fell by a figure ‘in the low teens’, amid a decline in beer consumption.
A survey by Datafolha last summer found 53% of Brazilians were drinking less than they had in 2024, a trend that is common around the world. However, Brazilian brewers also had to contend with a methanol contamination crisis in the summer of 2025, which led to even more people avoiding bars or choosing soft drinks and water over alcoholic ones.
