“Our new virtual beer, Heineken Silver is an ironic joke. It is a self-aware idea that pokes fun at us and many other brands that are jumping into the metaverse with products that are best enjoyed in the real world. For now, you can’t taste pixels and bytes. So, we want to make a joke about that and remind everyone that nothing beats the taste of a refreshing beer, including our new virtual Heineken® Silver, in the real world,” says Bram Westenbrink, Global Head, Heineken Brand.
Heineken built quite a story: The virtual beer was “brewed” in Heineken’s virtual brewery in Decentraland. A-yeast was replaced by A-Pixels. It was brewed with Binary Coded Hops grown by NPC (non-player character) farmers, with the entire virtual process overseen by Virtual Brewing Assistants, digitized stand-ins for Heineken’s Star Brewers.