MINGLE MINGLE MINGLE!

Yes, I have been gone for a while. 

My first event of the year: The Mingle, held at Nairobi Racecourse. It is supposed to be an event that people meet, flirt, play games  - kwa ufupi, have fun.

I arrive at the entrance and there is an army of security officers (G4S, to be exact -  but not the ones you see in town. These guys were big and looked like they take pleasure in rearranging dental formula). At the end of the queue they give me a wrist tag. Past that, two young ladies dressed in Heineken football jerseys hand me a bottle of Heineken. I like it already and I’m not even inside!

There is green everywhere, i.e. Heineken everywhere; tents, posters, etc. I find the Heineken VIP lounge. Ladies and tables and couches. Heineken couches, I kid you not. This whole time there is loud music and swarms of people passing me by; I am stuck in a green moment and I take a sip. It almost feels like I am in a brewery with all this branding; in my head, Daniel Craig is about to show up any minute now. After the successful Heineken campaign, anything is possible, right? Teaming up with the Mingle was also an excellent marketing idea, seeing as all of Nairobi and their mother wants to go for it after it became marketing. I am of the opinion that marketing should hit you like those cold high school showers asubuhi asubuhi; and I think that is what Heineken is slowly but surely managing to achieve.

I give Heineken a clean ten out of ten.

I have said it a thousand times. East Africa Breweries Limited should up their game. Yes, they have a bigger market share and are not as aggressive as Heineken, but…why are we still doing Pilsner Pool Challenge, which has been there since I was in primary?

I can’t wait to see what Heineken will do for the Champions League Final!

LICENCE TO DRINK

There are 4 types of chemical bonds:

• Ionic bond
• Covalent bond
• Polar bond
• James Bond 

Let’s concentrate on James bond. The latest movie Skyfall which is 23^rd of its series, is coming out this November. What you didn’t know is you will not hear his signature line anymore; the ‘shaken not stirred’ one. Now, he will say Heineken. Yes, Heineken the green-bottled Dutch beer. I was as surprised as you; the legendarily suave ladies’ man will actually drink beer. Alas! Could it be that James Bond is an ordinary bond – err, man, just like you and me?

Before you get angry that this Bond is now drinking beer, there are marketing/advertising and production reasons behind this partnership. In previous movies, the Bonds were so smooth that even when 5 goons are after him and a building is exploding behind him, he still has time to open the car door for a lady. This generation’s Bond, Daniel Craig, is a man’s man, not a ladies’ man. Compared to Pierce Brosnan, he is not as easy on the eye. He’s rough and tough. When he drink’s a man’s man drink, a beer, it’s believable.

I feel that with this partnership, Heineken has upgraded itself from being just a beer to being the  smoothest, badassest beer (drunk by the smoothest, badassest man). Its competition, Guinness, whose current slogan is ‘Come drink at the table of men’ will be in trouble after Skyfall premieres, simply because Bond is drinking Heineken; all men on the planet want to be James Bond (and all the ladies just drool and drop at his feet), so they are going to drink whatever he is drinking.

For a long time Heineken has sponsored sports; first Liverpool Football Club , then the UEFA Champions League which is a huge success. We are talking about the guys who brought Usain Bolt on as a hype man in last season’s final match between Chelsea and Bayern Munich. They should bring Daniel Craig this time. They have gone a step further, a step larger still, by choosing a universally popular far-reaching platform: the world’s longest-running movie franchise (James Bond just turned 50 on Bond Day, October 5^th). Heineken is branching out from traditional sporting sponsorship to entertainment industry, with one swift, well-calculated move. It is, quite simply, brilliant. I love it.

Just because Heineken positioned itself strategically with James Bond, today I give Heineken a ten over ten. The basic moral of this post is, positioning in a new market must be strategic and properly thought out.

As soon as I learned this information on a Friday afternoon, I promptly walked into a classy bar and did my best James Bond impersonation for the female waiter who quickly approached. In a charming, Bond-like manner, I lifted one eye brow and asked for a Heineken. She didn’t even notice that we were in my own movie, License to drink.