Heineken USA Buys Facebook & Twitter Users A Beer In A Bid To Expand its Customer Base

If buying a person a beer is a good way to foster a friendship, Heineken is angling to make a lot of friends — Facebook friends, that is. The Dutch brewing giant’s US division is running a media campaign on Facebook and Twitter in hopes of reaching new audiences in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Houston.

The ads will invite consumers to have a Heineken, Heineken Light or Dos Equis on the company’s tab.

The sampling effort, run through technology provider Gratafy, will let people of legal drinking age enter their smartphone’s number to get a link sent to their phones. After clicking that link and selecting “choose a bar,” the user is asked to allow the site access to their location information.

The site then uses that information to order the list of bar options by their geographical distance from the person’s current location.

Once the bar is chosen, the user gets a customized landing page featuring a three-digit code — which automatically updates itself and changes every 12 hours. The free beer offer also has an expiration date and can only be used by a single person a single time. Users show their servers the code, and Heineken picks up the tab for that person’s beer. The brewer says it’s the largest social sampling program ever to appear on Facebook, and it’s the first time a brand has partnered to sample beer via Twitter.

“Heineken has always put a premium on reaching customers in innovative ways, and we’re truly excited about this partnership [with Gratafy],” said Ron Amram, senior media director of Heineken USA, in a statement. “Facebook and Twitter are areas… our customers frequent the most…. we’re connecting with them in arguably their most social setting, to offer a complimentary Heineken, Heineken Light, or Dos Equis.”

Heineken has purchased paid media on Facebook and Twitter so that it reaches an audience beyond the current followers and fans of its social pages. However, the offer is open to anyone who engages with the ads, and those who redeem the offer are given a chance to share it to their own social networks.

Though Heineken said the offer would be distributed via targeted ads, it declined to specify the targeting parameters or the audience it was hoping to reach.

Gratafy has a network of restaurants and bars in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Denver, Chicago and Seattle that allows brands — including the restaurants and bars themselves — to gift menu items to people using social channels and other means of distribution.