What You Know vs.
What You Need:
Why Heineken Chose Bounce
Summary
In today’s world of growing polarisation and loneliness, Heineken is on a mission to brew the joy of true togetherness. For 150 years, the brand has been bringing the world together over a beer and consumer understanding has been an integral part of this. When it came to choosing a research partner to deliver agile insights, Heineken Ireland needed a solution that could provide research expertise without sacrificing speed or affordability. That’s why they chose Bounce.
It always feels like there has to be a compromise. Choose two of these (speed, cost efficiency and expertise), but you can’t choose three. We use a lot of full-service agencies and local agencies and we’re really happy with them. But what stood out with Bounce is that we can still get access to research consultants. They poached a lot of experienced researchers from some of the big agencies, so I get access to them but with speed and affordability.
Mary McMahon, Head of Insights, Media and Innovation, Heineken Ireland said:
Agility plays a fundamental role in Heineken’s mission to delight more consumers globally, because it allows the team to pivot and iterate. It also frees up more of their time to focus on diagnosing the problem at hand, crafting stronger stories and recommendations and tying the insights back to decisions.
Mary shared an example:
That’s one of the reasons we really value Bounce. The agility and speed. I put a research request into the team a couple of weeks ago on a Thursday and by Monday, I had the full report, accessible on the dashboard. So I knew, on Monday, I was getting it, and I was able to carve out time in my diary to absorb it and look at the insights from my brand’s perspective.
Since partnering with Bounce in 2025, they’ve informed the launch of a new music festival in Ireland using agile insights, they’ve delved into Heineken’s connection to the World Cup and they’re rolling out a new RTD using pack testing results. All delivered in days by their dedicated Bounce research team.
In fact, Mary spoke on stage at Quirk’s Dallas 2026 with Bounce’s Co-CEO and Co-Founder, Charlie Butler about her experience ditching DIY tools for The Insights Operating System. But what specific problems were Heineken trying to solve and what impact have they seen since?
The Challenge
When the Heineken Ireland insights team decided to partner with Bounce, there were three core challenges they needed to solve:
Budget limitations after mandated agency spend
On the 1st of January, I have a pretty decent research budget. By the 2nd of January, by the time the PO’s have been raised [for our full-service agency partners], the budget is a lot smaller [for unexpected requests]. This makes the budget a real pain point for me.
Timing limitations to deliver actionable insights
If I use a full-service agency and go into fieldwork for a couple of months, so much can change between briefing the project and getting the debrief.
Capacity limitations as a team of 5
If anyone from my team is on annual leave for a few weeks, I need to lean on a vendor and have a solution at hand that can scale up to meet those needs. So, instead of just getting the dashboard, I’d also ask one of Bounce’s research consultants to pull out insights for me, put it in a deck or scale it all the way up to a debrief.
What you know vs. what you need
As Heineken works with multiple research agencies and is mandated to use them for certain projects, they could have chosen to take their research needs to them. But the team saw an opportunity to deliver the same depth of insights, faster and more cost effectively for projects that require an agile approach.
We have strong relationships with our full-service agencies. As a global organisation, we’re mandated to use them for certain things, like innovation and market rollouts. The times I choose not to use them are when agility is key. If I want to test a hypothesis or check the sentiment of a brand, I’ll use a company like Bounce.
Mary McMahon, Head of Insights, Media and Innovation, Heineken Ireland
What we’ve achieved together
1 Delivering a new chapter in Heineken’s music legacy
Music has played a fundamental role in Heineken’s history. Hosting 30 four-day multi-stage festivals between 1990 and 1996 and the Heineken Green Energy festival in Ireland from 1996 to 2008 made this one of the most ambitious corporate music initiatives ever seen.
After sponsoring hundreds of music festivals since then, Heineken wanted to take back the reins to create an intimate and immersive live music experience that fans could truly connect with. This wasn’t a one-off marketing campaign; it was a return to a category the brand has long invested in and the team needed local, current answers about what the Irish audience want from this type of experience.
Through pre-launch testing with over 1,000 respondents, Heineken learnt current preferences around live music events among Gen Z and millennials, including artists, beverages, music genres, venues types, preferred days of the week and ticket prices. They also tested a series of potential festival names to identify the most compelling option, with Green Light coming out on top.
Having these insights delivered in days by a dedicated research lead who could help unpick the results and identify what they meant for Heineken enabled the team to action the recommendations. As a result, Heineken GREENLIGHT launched in May 2026, turning Ireland’s bank holidays into city-wide music takeovers.
Total attendance across the May weekend reached several thousand, seeing performances from the likes of Mike Skinner, Basement Jaxx and DJ Seinfeld. Festival ambassador and BBC Radio 6 Music DJ Deb Grant said “the Dublin shows were some of the best I’ve ever experienced”.
Fiona Curtin, Marketing Director at Heineken Ireland shared:
Heineken has a long history of supporting music culture in Ireland, and Heineken GREENLIGHT marks an exciting evolution of that commitment.
2 A growing presence in the RTD space
As a brewing powerhouse, Heineken spent decades prioritising its core beer portfolio. However, over the past 10 years, the brand has embraced the exploding global demand for ready-to-drink beverages.
This began with ‘beer-plus’ offerings like Desperados and Cider, followed by Hard Seltzer brand, Pure Piraña. In 2023, this expanded into premium canned cocktails. Heineken UK acquired a significant stake in SERVED, a fast-growing premium RTD brand co-owned by Ellie Goulding.
To support the brand into its next stage of growth, the team needed to understand consumer perceptions of the can and multipack designs for SERVED and why they felt that way. They also wanted to test which product description was clearest and most compelling.
One of my colleagues was testing some RTD’s and a new pack design. We created a questionnaire, but we were very busy. You know, you’re writing the questionnaire and your Microsoft Teams is popping up and your emails are coming in and it’s hard to focus. We wrote it, we put it in and we thought we were happy with it. But one of the research consultants at Bounce proactively gave us his perspective. ‘With what you’re trying to find out here, if you ask those three questions in a slightly different way, you’ll get better results.’ We trusted him, we changed it and got the results we actually needed.
The results provided a distinct winner for both the pack design testing and the product description and the team are now implementing these learnings in an updated pack roll-out for SERVED.
Another problem brand-side is the pain of not being able to decide on something. But because of his guidance, we had a clear winner. So we were able to make the decision and move on and now we’re rolling it out.
What’s next?
Right now, Heineken Ireland are using Bounce to find out how the GREENLIGHT events and campaign have influenced associations and perceptions of the brand, especially in relation to music.
So far, the results have seen a marked increase in unprompted and prompted music associations, ad recall and memorability, as well as growing sentiment that Heineken is ‘a brand for me’. A clear indication that the events resonated with the desired Gen Z audience in a way that ties Heineken back to its roots in music.
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