Heineken, give yourself a good name

By Kate Hellman

While participating in a panel at the Albert Lasker event hosted by Medill last October, Susan Credle, creative director at Leo Burnett USA, made a comment that really stuck with me. She said that a product or brand is not the only thing we serve when we advertise: “I think we have to serve the community…the world…[and] the people. Which is that we are inviting them to public spaces not unlike architecture.”

It’s true that great ads enhance public space. They make you stop, think, and look, like good art. Other ads seem to have mindboggling disregard for the notion of advertising as a public space.

That is why the Heineken TV ad “The Tiger” leaves me feeling violated in my own living room. The ad shows a man at a wedding reception. He spots an attractive woman, and we assume he will go straight for her. Instead, he charms her by asking an elderly woman sitting next to her to dance (after leaving her with a Heineken, of course). Now, if this ad had been muted, I too would have been charmed off my feet. After all, what woman doesn’t appreciate an attractive gentleman? But then, the ad turns itself on its head. The voiceover says, “There are two types of tigers. One that goes straight for the prey and one that makes the prey surrender to him.”



I hope I speak for women and men alike in that calling a woman “prey” is not just demeaning; it’s sick. As a noun prey means "an animal taken by a predator as food" and conjures the image of a helpless animal being attacked and mauled to death. In a world where women are brutally raped and killed every single day, making a woman analogous to prey is beyond appalling.

The last shot of the ad displays the campaign’s theme, “Give Yourself a Good Name.” Well, Heineken, here is my suggestion to you: Take a cue from the classy man in your ad and give your own brand a good name. Simply substituting the word “lady” for “prey” would accomplish this nicely by bringing women back to human status.

Your ad is shown in public space, where women exist as 50 percent of the population and also happen to be some of your most loyal customers. I would really love to be able to drink a frosty Heineken tall boy without envisioning myself dead in a forest with flies buzzing around me.

Note: Very recently, Heineken changed the word “prey” to “prize.” While not quite as tasteless as referring to her as prey, it still leaves her as a possession to be conquered.

Kate Hellman is a student in the Masters in Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern University’s Medill School and can be reached at katehellman2011@u.northwestern.edu.