A feminist and a dude who feels awfully oppressed walk into a warehouse... It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it’s actually the setup for Heineken’s “Worlds Apart” experiment. Created by Publicis London, it’s being billed as the antidote to Pepsi’s obtusely pop-candy take on our messy political reality.
Instead of positioning resistance as the new Coachella, Heineken takes a more measured approach. Ahead of the operation, it filmed six people stating strongly held beliefs—that men are oppressed, that the fight for feminism is far from over; that climate change is real or “piffle”; that transgender people need a voice; that “transgender” is nonsense semantics. Those unwitting candidates were then paired with their opposites and sent together into warehouses, where they found themselves with some instructions and a piece of furniture to build. Guess what it is?