How to turn A Dying Category into a Protected Species

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Hello Creative Souls,

In today’s edition, we learn “Creative Positioning” and how these Irish lads are just being complete badasses by doing it. True legends.

As you know, Irish pubs aren’t just places to drink. They’re where life gets recorded in real time. Births are toasted there, deaths are mourned there, matches are re-lived there. Stories get told, retold, and exaggerated across decades at the same tables, under the same framed photos, poured by the same hands. Regulars have “their” stools. Couples meet, break up, and still orbit the room from opposite ends of the bar.

Heineken’s “Pub Museums” campaign steps into that moment with one simple move:
Don’t argue that pubs are important. Reframe them as heritage.

I didn’t learn what Irish Pubs mean to people from a brand case study.
I learnt it the same way most of us did — watching pub culture quietly hold entire lives together in films and shows. Think of the bar in Good Will Hunting, How I Met Your Mother or Cheers, or even Ted Lasso’s Crown & Anchor: the pint is just the prop. The real show is memory, ritual, and unresolved feelings sitting three-deep at the counter.

That’s what “memory storage devices with taps” really means:
the pub quietly holds a community’s milestones, gossip, rituals, and grief — and keeps serving them back, pint after pint.

The problem: rising costs, closures, and a creeping sense that “just another pub shutting down” is normal. The regular approach just wouldn’t cut it because it’s been done to death across categories.

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2. What most people miss

Most brand storytelling stays shallow:

• “We’ve been around for 100 years.”

• “We sponsor culture.”

• “We love community.”

It’s all vibes, no structure.

What Fabric of England did for shirts and kits, Pub Museums does for bricks and beams:
It takes what’s already there — history, rituals, origin stories, caretakers — and elevates it through a narrative frame.

The trick isn’t new assets.
It’s a new lens.

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3. The event (in one breath)

Heineken and Publicis Dublin took some of Ireland’s oldest, most storied pubs and officially reframed them as “Pub Museums.”

• They gave bars like Sean’s (often cited as one of the oldest pubs in Ireland) and Toner’s the treatment you’d expect for a national gallery.

• Plaques, guided audio, storytelling about who drank there, what happened there, and what’s been held together over generations.

• The point wasn’t: “Drink more Heineken.”

• The point was: “This is living history. Don’t let it vanish.”

The pint stayed in frame.
But the place became the protagonist.

4. The hidden driver: Narrative reframing

The psychological move here:

Most people file “a pub” under:

The campaign forcibly moves it into a different folder:

That jump is the work.

Once you accept the frame “this is a museum,” everything else follows:

• The landlord becomes a curator

• Old regulars become “exhibits”

• Stories become artifacts

• You’re not just “spending money”; you’re “supporting preservation”

No extra guilt, no moral lecture.
Just a better label for what was already true.

5. The pattern it fits

This sits inside a bigger, very potent pattern:

You’ve seen echoes of this in:

• Bookstores as “third spaces,” not just shops

• Street food vendors framed as “intangible culinary heritage”

• Vinyl rebranded as “listening rituals,” not obsolete tech

Pub Museums is the pub version of that move:
“This isn’t nightlife. This is archive.”

6. The framework: Custodian Storytelling

You can formalise what this campaign does into a simple model:

Step 1 — Find the thing everyone takes for granted
The place, product, or ritual that’s “just there.”
(Pubs, local cafés, street courts, night buses.)

Step 2 — Name the real role it plays
Not “serves drinks,” but “hosts community grief, joy, and gossip.”
Not “sells coffee,” but “keeps freelancers from collapsing alone.”

Step 3 — Cast the owner as a custodian
Move them from “operator” to “guardian / curator.”
Give them language and visuals that match that new role.

Step 4 — Give it museum-level treatment
Plaques, tours, maps, audio guides, limited-run prints, archives.
These don’t need to be expensive — they just need to feel official.

Step 5 — Step back as the brand
You are not the hero.
You are the funder, the frame, the quiet benefactor.

That’s exactly what Heineken does here: less “look at us,” more “look at what was right under your nose.”

7. Applying it back to your brand

If you’re in marketing, you can steal this play almost anywhere:

• Gyms → from “fitness centers” to “everyday resilience labs”

  • Trainers as “strength archivists,” walls as “ PR history,” not just mirrors.

• Co-working spaces → from “desk rentals” to “startup museums”

  • Curated exhibits of failed decks, early prototypes, first invoices, first hires.

• Long-running SaaS tools → from “software” to “institutional memory engines”

  • Surfaces of “this project’s 8-year timeline,” “this team’s evolution,” not just dashboards.

Ask:

1. What’s dying or being undervalued in my category?

2. How do I reframe it as something people would be embarrassed to lose?

3. How do I give it museum-grade treatment without turning it into a mausoleum?

That’s where the good work lives.

8. The lesson in one-ish line

Don’t just market what people consume.
Preserve what they’d miss if it disappeared —
and show them they’ve been walking through a museum all along.

Figment is written by Abbhinav Kastura, a writer/producer who has spent a decade making impactful internet videos and Guru Nicketan, an advertising nerd, B2B Marketer, stand-up comedian, and a film buff.