Heineken in the House: Improving Online Media Reputation through Featuring a Sponsored Brand Community

Nowadays, more and more organizations use social media to promote their sponsorships of big events. Heineken has created a major brand community by facilitating the Holland Heineken House during the Olympic Games. This study investigates to what extent featuring a sponsored brand community on social media affected Heineken’s online media reputation. A quantitative content analysis on Heineken’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts before, during and after the Olympic Games in 2016 was performed to analyse the relation between the promotion of the Holland Heineken House and this company’s online media reputation. The use of humour, hashtags, key events and videos have been taken into account. The results show that the promotion of the Holland Heineken House positively influences Heineken’s online media reputation merely on Twitter. This study thus provides valuable insights into how an organization’s online media reputation can score with sponsoring a brand community.