The Value of Distinctive Brand Assets as demonstrated by "Ken"

Quick, what brand is being partially shown in the out-of-home advertisement below?

I'm going to bet most of you knew it was Heineken.

The font and distinctive green are dead giveaways if you're even a casual beer drinker.

And that's the reason you should want to build and maintain distinctive brand assets: consumers know the brand even when the brand name isn't there.

And when you have distinctive brand assets, you get to do creative executions like this one.

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P.S. This ad isn't something Heineken put into the market; it's something Ciaran McKeon submitted to One Minute Briefs and then posted to LinkedIn. But it's a terrific idea and something Heineken absolutely could have (and probably should have) done to authentically jump on the pink Barbie bandwagon. ('Let's go party... with a Heineken!") Nice job, Ciaran.

P.P.S. You would be forgiven if you answered the question at the start of this post with "Barbie". That's because "Ken" himself could be considered a distinctive brand asset for the Barbie line of toys, and that if he weren't, this ad wouldn't work even despite the fact it seems that everyone is talking about Barbie and her beau on account of the box-office-smashing film. So in this ad, we get two distinctive brand assets working together -- brilliant!