Before I get started I should state that the first ever beer week in Canada, Vancouver Craft Beer Week, saw many forms of promotion, not just social media. That said, the amazing success of VCBW would have not been possible without a strong following generated via Twitter, Facebook, and a ton of honest hard work. None of the media partners, newspapers articles, blog posts, radio coverage, and sponsors would have shown interest in VCBW without showing strong social media numbers in the early going. After establishing VCBW through these channels we were able to leverage all forms of marketing as a final push; however, at that time over half of the ticketed events were already sold out and the week could have been considered a success even without these tools. In the end VCBW was a staggering success, accomplishing in its first year what many events of it size take upwards of five years to achieve.

Let’s rewind a bit and I’ll take you back to the initial planning for VCBW. I am a marketing freelancer and passionate craft beer junkie. I maintain a beer blog in my spare time, although that spare time disappeared the second VCBW planning took on a life of its own. In early October 2009 I was approached by a local leader in the craft beer community about putting on Canada’s first ever craft beer week. Given the look of the team he appeared to have assembled, I though it had a reasonable chance at success and that I would have a well defined roll in the process. Although planning began in October of 2009, the reality is not much got done until after the 2010 Winter Olympics were over as no venues or brewers wished to discuss anything until after that point. This made our timeline roughly two months to plan and execute over 30 events. The timeline also made it very difficult to prove our market, attract sponsors, and generate media buzz. This is where social media changed the game.

Initially Facebook and Twitter were chosen as the two main social media outlets we needed to focus on. Accounts were created, branded, and content added. These accounts preceded the VCBW website, outside of a landing page with brand, dates, and links to the social media accounts. This made social media the only way to gain information about VCBW at the time. All the organizing committee members pressed their friends and family to follow and like these accounts, giving us a baseline which we could leverage. From there we provided incentive, such as random giveaways of free tickets to high profile events, to our fans in order to get them to spread the word and boost our numbers. Although not every person driven to the VCBW social media accounts were qualified, resulting in artificial numbers at times, those people soon faded leaving a strong core to work with. This provided us with the numbers we needed to prove the concept, attract venues, sponsors, and media attention.

Allowing social media to be the proof of concept resulted in a dog-pile of interested parties. Soon we found those who ignored us previously quickly changed their tune and were chasing us down. The more we worked on our overall marketing the more the social media accounts grew with qualified supporters. These accounts then became an extremely important communication channel, not only that, but our de-facto customer relationship management tool. Although anyone could email us and receive a response in under 24 hours, many people chose to use social media as their main way of getting in touch with organizers as they saw responses to any and all those who chose to get in touch.

In the end social media provided everything VBCW needed in order to make it a success. At first it proved the market for such an event existed. From there it attracted brewers, venues, sponsors and media interest. Once those fell into place it allowed us to keep in touch with our customer base in order to make sure they were taken care of to the best of our ability. Marketing, sales, and customer relationship management were all taken care of using social media. As the traditional marketing efforts blossomed the more the social media following for VCBW grew. Most importantly, this lays the groundwork for years to come. Unlike many events that don’t use social media to its utmost, VCBW now has a communication engine to remain in front of its most loyal supporters all year round. Providing information and conversation that will allow for sustained momentum year to year, eliminating the need to reestablish the attention of it’s core market every single year.

Hard Numbers:

• Non Ticketed Events or Specials: 11 (most running all week long)
• Ticketed Events: 23
• Event Tickets Sold: 1500
• Craft Beer Business Growth Over May 2009: 5% average increase in sales for restaurants, breweries, and stores participating in Vancouver Craft Beer Week.

For more information on Vancouver Craft Beer Week check out these links:

• VCBW Website
• VCBW Facebook Page
• VCBW Twitter

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