I just got the most recent Magic Hat Brewery newsletter. Overall, I think their newsletter design is pretty slick, and their promotions are pretty solid – centered around music mostly. They also celebrate their #9 Apricot beer on 9/9 every year. I can’t say that #9 is my favorite brew, but I know they sell a crap-load of it. If this is your most iconic SKU, wouldn’t you think that it would be alright to pump some marketing dollars into developing a unique giveaway? Apparently, the Vermont brewery doesn’t think so.
Magic Hat is giving away a #9 cruiser bike.
I know they don’t sell New Belgium up in Vermont yet, but the cruiser is absolutely New Belgium’s marketing territory. In fact, NBB is giving away a cruiser a day on their facebook page (which, as they reminded us about a hundred times last week, has past 100,000 fans – but that’s a different post altogether). To top it off, it looks like Magic Hat is giving away a single cruiser.
I wanted to check out their site to look into the details of this lackluster and uninspiring promotion, but their site is obscenely slow, and I have to apparently log in to even see what the promotion is. I’m not going to take 3 minutes to set up an account just to see if this is a good or bad promotion. And I bet they’re missing out on a shit load of consumers who think the same way as me.
If I were doing this promotion, I’d drive consumers towards a social network that they already use, like Facebook. We’re all basically logged into Facebook all the time anyway, right? And I would come up with a unique giveaway that would build the #9 brand. In just a couple minutes, here are better giveaways I came up with:
A year’s supply of apricots for 20 winners
10 tickets + airfare to the #9 9/9 event at the Brewery
Help brew a batch of #9 and take 9 cases of #9 home
A Magic Hat – some cool hat that you can put on your wall/car/fridge to show off your Magic Hat awesomeness
So these aren’t the greatest, but I came up with four on-brand giveaways in 2 minutes that would build the Magic Hat brand, not just copy another brewery’s most iconic swag item. So put that bong down, Magic Hat’s marketing department and hire some more creative people for your department.
I’ve been a big fan of the Sam Adams commercials ever since they dropped that awful campaign where Sam Adams was spying on conversations in bars in restaurants. Jim Koch and has done a great job of promoting his brand and the Craft Beer segment in general by communicating their passion for beer.
But this might be pushing it. Brown bottles? The use of brown bottles doesn’t differentiate Sam Adams from any other Craft Beer brands. Or most other beer brands in general!
The result? I think it undermines the other spots. Consumers are smart and will say, “Brown bottles? So what?” and have less interest in the other commercials.
Jim – call your agency and pull this commercial ASAP. There are too many other great things to say about your beer and brand before you have to resort this stuff. And if you need ideas, contact us – we would be happy to help.
Developing, building and maintaining a brand is hard work. One thing that makes things easier is if your brand story is authentic. There are many ways to show off this (probably-overused) buzzword, and Dogfish Head is taking a step towards solidifying their “off-centered” brand identity. We all know that DFH tries to push the envelope on new brews and almost-forgotten styles, all the while keeping quality at a high level. I see no reason that
Most anyone who has ever met DFH CEO Sam Calagione agrees that he’s a pretty great/inspiring/honest/classy person. I interviewed him for a Flying Dog video at the first SAVOR festival, and he was really nice and was happy to take a couple minutes to chat with me. I’ve definitely met brewers who wouldn’t give me the time of day, and even sat next to a certain brewery owner at a beer dinner who downright treated me like shit, although his wife was pretty nice (you’ll probably have to buy me a couple or 5 beers before I tell you who that was). I’m happy that Sam is such a nice guy, because I loathe douchebags in the beer industry. Actually, the only real negative I have against DFH is that I interviewed for a job with them, and after a 30 minute interview, I never heard from them again.
Most craft brewers send out an email newsletter. Craftbeer.us subscribes to quite a few of them and reads some of them – but we’re wondering if we’re the only ones. Please take our poll below and let us know if/how you use them. We’ll report the results in a week.
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