Heineken, a well-known Dutch brewing brand, decided to advertise its new product in a virtual space. On April 6-10, a temporary store called Metabar was in operation in Milan's Piazza Sempione. It was a special project aimed at promoting the new Silver beer.
Heineken and his Metabar in Milan
Famous beer producer Heineken enters the virtual space. However, he did not do it in the standard way. The brand appeared in March in the Decentraland metaversa, and in the first half of April, Metabar - a temporary store promoting a new beer called Silver - operated in Milan. On the screens placed in them, customers could watch the metaverse in which J. Demsky was involved, a DJ stand and several lounges. In one of them, users could use a QR code to vote for music that was played during the day.
Metabar met with great interest. Many famous artists have appeared in the store, including DJ Silvie Loto, musician Dardust and comedian Valeriono Lundini. As announced by Heineken, Metabar was supposed to unite the digital space with the physical world.
Metabar without the option to pay in cryptocurrencies
Heineken has declared that the event is in no way related to cryptocurrencies or the NFT. It is interesting, however, that people visiting the store, after prior registration, received a pass called "token". It had a special QR code that could be used, for example, when buying drinks. Payments could only be made with a standard credit card, not in cryptocurrencies.
A message to customers
The whole project did not seem very technologically advanced. In the large hall, you could watch a preview of the Decentraland Heineken metaverse, as well as order a beer on automatically operated monitors. As Bram Westenbrink, the international brand manager of Heineken argued in March, Silver beer is only a joke to prove the uselessness of the metaverse space.
Westenbrink emphasized in one of his statements that nowadays more and more products are gaining enormous popularity in the metaverse space. However, we are not able to taste the pixels the way we can enjoy the taste of cold beer in the real world. Also, the new Heineken Silver beer will certainly taste better in real life than in virtual space.