Nobody outside the Netherlands knew what King’s Day was. That was the insight — and the opportunity.
In 2014, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Heineken set out to fix that. Not with a TV spot. Not with a media buy. With a stunt so well-executed that it ran for three consecutive years, evolved with each edition, and generated millions of views before most brands had figured out what “experiential marketing” actually meant in practice.
This is the story of The Orange Experience — one of the most quietly brilliant co-branded campaign series of the 2010s.
What is King’s Day, and why should any brand care?
Koningsdag — King’s Day — is the Dutch national holiday marking the birthday of King Willem-Alexander, celebrated every 27 April. In Amsterdam alone, the city of 850,000 residents absorbs up to a million visitors in a single day. The canals fill with boats. Every street corner hosts a flea market, a DJ set, or both. The entire country turns orange.
It is, objectively, one of the best parties in the world. And until around 2014, almost nobody outside the Netherlands had heard of it.
KLM knew this. As the national carrier, they had a direct commercial interest in more people flying to Amsterdam. Heineken — born in Amsterdam in 1864 — had brand heritage rooted in exactly this kind of Dutch pride and celebration. Both had global reach. Both had the same problem: how do you make a domestic cultural moment land internationally without it feeling like a tourism brochure?
The answer they found was to stop advertising the holiday and start kidnapping people for it.
The mechanics of a brilliant stunt
The first edition launched in New York. KLM and Heineken set up a mini replica of King’s Day — flea market, orange costumes, the works — right on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan. Passers-by who got some dance questions right were quietly flagged as finalists. The winners were called to JFK Airport, still with no idea of their destination. They landed in Amsterdam on King’s Day, were ferried through the canals, and ended the night at a private performance by DJ Armin van Buuren.
The second edition, in 2015, went wider. KLM and Heineken visited bars in Shanghai, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, and Oslo. Anyone who ordered a Heineken was asked if they wanted an “orange experience.” Those who said yes were handed an orange outfit and told to sing a Dutch folk song — Oranje Boven — in front of the entire bar. If they managed it, they were immediately put in a car to the airport, allowed to grab a bag and a friend, and flown to Amsterdam. The canal party that year featured DJ Hardwell. The YouTube video hit nearly 1.5 million clicks in under 30 days.
The third edition refined the hook further still: KLM and Heineken searched specifically for people who shared their birthday with King Willem-Alexander — April 27. Winners from Beijing, London, Rio, and San Francisco were flown to the Netherlands, photographed at Soestdijk Palace, given a crash course in Dutch royal history, and taken to the A’DAM Tower to look out over the city while DJ Martin Garrix played below them.
Each year, the campaign got smarter. The hook sharpened. The earned media multiplied.
Why it actually worked
The Orange Experience succeeded for reasons that go deeper than “it was a fun stunt.”
First, the brand fit was genuine. KLM and Heineken are both Dutch institutions with genuine cultural authority over this moment. When they invite the world to King’s Day, it doesn’t feel like a brand intrusion — it feels like an invitation from two locals who actually know the party. That authenticity is hard to fake and easy to squander. They didn’t squander it.
Second, the stunt was designed for participation, not observation. The folk song challenge in 2015 is the clearest example: it turned ordinary bar-goers into performers, and in doing so created a moment of genuine vulnerability and humour that no advertising script could replicate. The content filmed itself. The emotion was real because the surprise was real.
Third, neither brand tried to sell anything. There were no offers, no discount codes, no product demos. The only message was: King’s Day in Amsterdam is extraordinary, and we can get you there. For KLM, that is the product. For Heineken, the association with that feeling is the brand equity. Both walked away richer for it.
Finally, the multi-year format matters more than it might seem. Repeating a stunt annually — with meaningful evolution — turns a one-off moment into an expected event. By year three, people were looking for it. Media was waiting to cover it. The campaign had become its own cultural moment.
What this tells us about co-branded experiential
Most co-branded campaigns fail because neither brand is willing to fully commit to the other’s territory. You get a watered-down collaboration that serves both brands’ legal teams more than their audiences.
KLM and Heineken avoided this by building around a shared cultural asset — King’s Day — rather than around either brand’s product. The holiday became the hero. The brands were the enablers. That’s an important distinction. When you serve the moment rather than your own agenda, people feel it.
There’s also something worth noting about the choice of markets. Shanghai, Cape Town, Rio, Oslo, Los Angeles — these are not obvious Heineken strongholds or KLM route priorities. They were chosen for cultural diversity and visual contrast, because the campaign needed to show that King’s Day transcends demographics. Orange is universal. Joy is universal. The Dutch folk song challenge was a feature, not a bug: it was designed to be slightly ridiculous, because ridiculous is shareable.
The question worth sitting with
King’s Day 2026 falls on Monday 27 April — a long weekend across much of Europe. The holiday is better known internationally than it was in 2014, but it’s still massively underrepresented in global brand marketing relative to its scale and energy.
The Orange Experience ran its course. But the insight that powered it — your domestic cultural moment is an underexported asset — hasn’t aged at all.
Which brands sitting on unexported cultural gold are still waiting to invite the world in?
