In Chicago, Heineken Uses Out of Home to Fuel Festival Season Success

March 25, 2025

Music lovers were all abuzz last May when the alcohol menu for Electric Daisy Carnival’s VIP Skydeck went viral for its sky-high prices. While the chatter focused on $94,000 table-service champagne packages, the menu also offered a humbler but no less marked-up option: $150 six-packs of Heineken.

Suffice it to say that music festival beer is big business. That’s why Heineken focuses its media plan on shindigs such as Chicago’s Lollapalooza, returning to Grant Park for its 21st edition, July 31 through August 3.


One of the Windy City’s signature events, Lolla’s eight stages this year will showcase more than 170 performers, including Olivia Rodrigo, Tyler The Creator, Sabrina Carpenter, RÜFÜS DU SOL, A$AP Rocky, and Korn. With such a wide range of artists, the crowd is similarly diverse – and similarly huge – numbering approximately 400,000 each year (SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times).

But hidden in that massive crowd is a challenge: how to reach an audience whose musical and beverage tastes have as much range as the Lolla line-up. For Heineken, the answer is train wraps!


Metra is Chicago’s commuter rail system. It’s a big one – the largest and busiest outside the NYC metro, in fact. Its ridership has been up each of the past three years, nearly 35.1 million in 2024 (SOURCES: APTA, Metra). The fact that Chicago’s traffic is second-worst in the country and #5 in the world might have something to do with Metra’s increasing popularity (SOURCE: INRIX), along with the upscale nature of the ride.

The system’s service area includes more than 3,700 square miles of Cook, DuPage, Will, Lake, Kane, and McHenry Counties, home to 8.7 million people (SOURCE: Metra). If that sounds like a massive region for any advertiser to wrap its arms around, that’s because it is.

That’s the beauty of our Chicago train wraps. Billboards stay in one place. Wraps go everywhere the train goes! That might seem an obvious point to make but it’s an important one – especially because some of the areas served by Metra have limited to no billboard advertising. In those communities, train wraps are the only out of home option.

While Heineken’s previous campaigns with OUTFRONT have employed dynamic digital creative that changes with the weather and contextually relevant ads at the US Open, this time around, the brand kept it simple, with images of its Heineken Silver product itself along with its low-carb, low-cal credentials.


The same creative echoed on carefully selected bulletins, posters, and digital bulletins throughout the region, even including a Spanish-language variant on several canvases, including this digital adjacent to I-290 in close vicinity to Pilsen and Little Village, two historic West Side neighborhoods dense with Hispanic residents, heritage, and culture (SOURCE: Illinois State Data Center). This strategic choice illustrates out of home’s ability to deliver the right message to the right audience in the right location.


To accommodate those extra-large Lollapalooza crowds, Metra rolls out the red carpet in the form of additional trains and expanded service. They roll out a green one for another extremely busy and beer-friendly annual occasion: St. Patrick’s Day. Metra has seen record-breaking ridership to service the crowds at Lolla, St. Paddy’s, and other large events. Metra’s all-time busiest day? The Cubs’ World Series championship parade in 2016 (SOURCE: Metra).

“Riders know the value of taking Metra to big events and we’re happy to serve our community by providing extra service for one of Chicago’s most iconic celebrations,” said Metra CEO/Executive Director Jim Derwinski earlier this month. The agency even got into the spirit of the Irish with its own float in the parade!

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Wisely, Heineken scheduled its train wraps and billboards to post the week prior to St. Paddy’s, ensuring that the green beer brand was top of mind on green beer day.

Of course, Lolla isn’t all alone in festival season and July is a long time away – but Ultra Music Festival happens this weekend in downtown Miami, where you will also not-so-coincidentally find this oversized Heineken wallscape.


From Lolla to Ultra, CRSSD to Coachella, music festivals represent a prime opportunity to connect with a crowd. Want to reach their audiences and activate them? We can show you how.

Author: Jay Fenster, Marketing Manager @ OUTFRONT

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