Heineken Launches Virtual Beer As An Ironic Joke

In a virtual launch event, the beer company launched and promoted their new product – virtual beer, as they made fun of the idea of tasting beer in the metaverse! 

Heineken explained that this was a joke that pokes fun at “us and other brands.” They explained that their ironic joke is pointed at brands looking at the metaverse while being aware that their products are best experienced in real life.

While the metaverse does not exist yet, many people believe that we’ll all be connected in virtual worlds that we’ll soon access through VR headsets.

This event took place in Decentraland, a user-owned virtual world, and actual journalists were invited to the mock launch. 

Heineken’s head of brand, Bram Westenbrink, stated that they understand how the metaverse may bring people together in an immersive manner, but it’s just not the best place to taste a new beer.

The most curious part was the company describing their virtual beer as “binary-coded hops grown by NPC (non-player character) farmers.” 

The idea of the metaverse became mainstream with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg outlining his idea of it and rebranding Facebook’s company as Meta. 

And ever since then, more and more brands, as big as Nike, have been eager to grab a slice of the so-called “metaverse” before it’s gone.

An editor for Immersive Wire describes his experience at the launch event as “intentionally bizarre” as a bouncer asked about his age as he headed inside the event. He explained lots of people in the group chat were unsure of what was going on and what they should do.