ARCHIVEStrings and Things Turns Cheestrings Into a Masterbrand With One Bizarrely Memorable Campaign
How Kerry Foods Turned Cheestrings Into a Masterbrand With the Strings and Things Campaign Strings...
Heineken Hides Jonah Lomu Inside a Dublin Pub Machine
The Jonah Lomu Machine is an ambient advertising activation created by Rothco for Heineken Ireland, published in August 2015, in which All Blacks legend Jonah Lomu was concealed inside a prize machine installed in a Dublin pub to surprise rugby fans as part of Heineken's Rugby World Cup 2015 sponsorship.
Heineken placed the installation in a Dublin pub in May 2015 as a live promotional experience tied to the broader "It's Your Call" Rugby World Cup 2015 campaign. The machine presented unsuspecting pub-goers with a heads-or-tails game, also called "It's Your Call," with prizes including signed rugby balls. When players engaged with the installation, they were met with the unexpected presence of one of rugby's most iconic figures. The activation distilled Heineken's sponsorship positioning into a single physical moment, converting a standard prize mechanic into a shareable, talked-about experience rooted entirely in the Irish market.
In Ireland, where rugby carries deep cultural weight and the Rugby World Cup commands sustained public attention, the choice to execute an ambient stunt inside a pub — the country's most socially charged venue — was deliberate. The campaign sits within the alcoholic drinks category and represents Rothco's approach of using live spectacle over paid media volume. According to records at adsoftheworld.com and clapboard.com, the campaign produced one media asset, suggesting its impact was concentrated in earned attention rather than broadcast reach. Clapboard's editorial team awards The Jonah Lomu Machine a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ingenuity within a contained, single-market execution.
Heineken held sponsorship rights to the Rugby World Cup 2015. Rather than competing solely through television or digital media, the brand pursued a physical, participatory format that could generate organic attention in the Irish market, where pub culture and rugby fandom are structurally intertwined.
Around 2015, Heineken was the world's third-largest brewer by volume, according to warc.com. Its primary global competitors included AB InBev and Carlsberg Group. AB InBev announced its acquisition of SABMiller in 2015, according to reporting by bbc.co.uk, a combination that would have represented a substantially larger share of global beer volume than any single competitor held independently. Against that consolidation pressure, Heineken's strategy in markets like Ireland depended on cultural relevance and emotional affinity rather than scale alone. Carlsberg, another major competitor in the Irish alcoholic drinks market, also maintained rugby-adjacent sponsorship activity during this period, intensifying the creative pressure on Heineken to differentiate its Rugby World Cup presence in Ireland.
The "It's Your Call" platform gave Heineken a conceptual through-line that connected a coin-toss mechanic — universally understood in sport — to the act of making decisions as a fan. In Ireland, where rugby identity is closely bound to both provincial club loyalty and international pride, this mechanic carried specific resonance. The ambient format allowed Heineken to concentrate its message at the exact moment and place of consumption: a Dublin pub, with a pint in hand, ahead of a tournament that captures the country's sporting imagination. According to Iapi Ie, reported effectiveness results for the broader campaign are attributed to the "It's Your Call" campaign as a whole rather than to The Jonah Lomu Machine activation specifically.
Rothco executed The Jonah Lomu Machine as a live ambient installation requiring precise logistical and creative coordination. The concept depended on concealment, timing, and the authentic reaction of unsuspecting pub visitors in Dublin, making production discipline as important as the creative idea itself.
According to records at adsoftheworld.com and clapboard.com, the credited creative team includes executive creative director Alan Kelly, art director Ray Swan, copywriter Emma Sharkey, and account director Grace Looney. Production was handled by Rattle. The division of labour reflects a campaign that required both a strong conceptual foundation — Kelly and Swan shaping the visual and experiential language of the installation — and precise on-the-ground execution managed through Rattle's production infrastructure.
The physical machine itself functioned as the primary creative medium. Its exterior mimicked the visual grammar of a standard prize or crane machine familiar to pub environments, which made the reveal of Jonah Lomu — one of the most physically imposing and widely recognised figures in rugby history — all the more disarming. The VFX and visual production elements associated with the single media asset, as listed on adsoftheworld.com and adruby.com, served to document and amplify the live experience rather than replace it. The campaign's creative architecture relied on the gap between expectation and reality: a mundane pub fixture concealing a rugby legend, a heads-or-tails game delivering a face-to-face encounter. In Ireland in August 2015, with Rugby World Cup fever building ahead of the September tournament, that gap was wide enough to generate genuine surprise. The production's success rested on Rothco's ability to keep the concealment credible until the moment of reveal, a constraint that shaped every physical and logistical decision the team made.
No verified performance data specific to The Jonah Lomu Machine activation is publicly available. According to iapi.ie, effectiveness results connected to Heineken's Rugby World Cup 2015 activity in Ireland are attributed to the broader "It's Your Call" campaign rather than to this individual activation, which means isolating the ambient stunt's contribution to measurable outcomes is not possible from public sources.
Structurally, however, the campaign demonstrates several characteristics associated with high-recall ambient work. The activation was designed around a single, unrepeatable moment of surprise — a format that, by its nature, generates word-of-mouth and earned media disproportionate to its media spend. The use of Jonah Lomu, whose status as a global rugby figure required no explanation to an Irish pub audience in 2015, removed the need for narrative setup and concentrated all creative energy on the reveal itself. The one documented media asset, as recorded at clapboard.com and adsoftheworld.com, suggests the campaign relied on the organic spread of that recorded moment rather than a paid distribution strategy.
In the Irish alcoholic drinks market, where Heineken competed against AB InBev-backed brands and Carlsberg for share of cultural relevance during major sporting events, the structural bet of The Jonah Lomu Machine was that a single, perfectly executed ambient moment could outperform a larger conventional media buy in earned attention and brand association. Whether it did so at measurable scale remains undocumented in the public record. Clapboard scores the campaign 71 out of 100, recognising the creative ambition and executional precision of the concept while noting the limited documented reach of a single-market, single-asset ambient activation.
The Jonah Lomu Machine was an ambient advertising activation created by Rothco for Heineken Ireland in August 2015. Jonah Lomu was concealed inside a prize machine installed in a Dublin pub, surprising rugby fans as part of Heineken's sponsorship of Rugby World Cup 2015. The stunt used a heads-or-tails game mechanic called "It's Your Call."
Rothco, a Dublin-based advertising agency, created The Jonah Lomu Machine for Heineken Ireland. The credited team included executive creative director Alan Kelly, art director Ray Swan, copywriter Emma Sharkey, and account director Grace Looney, with production handled by Rattle, according to adsoftheworld.com and clapboard.com records.
The Jonah Lomu Machine was installed in a Dublin pub in Ireland in 2015, with the campaign published in August 2015. It formed part of Heineken's broader "It's Your Call" Rugby World Cup 2015 sponsorship activation, targeting Irish rugby fans ahead of the September 2015 tournament, according to records at adsoftheworld.com and iapi.ie.
The Jonah Lomu Machine offered rugby-themed prizes including signed rugby balls. The installation used a heads-or-tails game mechanic called "It's Your Call," reflecting the name of Heineken's broader Rugby World Cup 2015 campaign in Ireland. The primary prize, however, was the unexpected face-to-face encounter with Jonah Lomu himself, as documented at clapboard.com.
No publicly documented awards specific to The Jonah Lomu Machine activation are available in the public record. The campaign is listed on adsoftheworld.com and adruby.com as a notable ambient execution by Rothco for Heineken Ireland in 2015. Clapboard assigns the campaign a score of 71 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ingenuity within a contained execution.
The Jonah Lomu Machine was a locally executed Irish activation within Heineken's global Rugby World Cup 2015 sponsorship. It expressed the "It's Your Call" campaign platform through a live ambient format, converting Heineken's sponsorship rights into a direct, physical fan experience in a Dublin pub rather than a conventional media placement, according to iapi.ie and clapboard.com.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
