Heineken Mexico systematically uses social media as both a marketing channel and a product development tool. In El Economista, company executives described how monitoring online conversations led to the relaunch of Tecate Titanium — a strong beer with 5.5 percent alcohol — under the campaign “We came back for you.” The move was presented as a response to consumer demand, identified through “listening” to followers on social platforms.
Behind this narrative of consumer connection lies a strategy of surveillance-based marketing. By continuously tracking digital behavior and sentiment, Heineken identifies emotional trends and adapts its branding to them — effectively using online users as unpaid focus groups. The company’s vice president of marketing framed it as empathy: “All our brands share one desire: to listen to the consumer.”
Scientific evidence shows that this type of engagement actively contributes to increased alcohol harm. A recent study on alcohol marketing in digital environments found that “engagement with alcohol marketing was more strongly related to alcohol behaviors, including online purchasing, having ever drunk alcohol, and drinking at hazardous levels, than exposure.” The same research highlighted that algorithmic promotion produces inequitable patterns of engagement, concentrating alcohol marketing among vulnerable users.
Heineken’s “listening” therefore serves a dual function — it amplifies brand reach while refining the very strategies that increase alcohol use and harm. The company uses consumer data not to meet existing needs, but to shape preferences and normalize high-risk alcohol use..
Promotion, or any marketing strategies, is Big Alcohol’s activity to drive alcohol availability and acceptability, to perpetuate the alcohol norm, and to place alcohol at the center of people’s thoughts and preferences, communities’ practices, and societies’ customs. The focus of this Dubious Five strategy is the people and their beliefs about alcohol products, the public and their attitudes about and behavior around alcohol products, and the consumers and how much, how often they buy and consume alcohol brands.