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

In one of the most embarrassing craft beer related lawsuits since the Vermonster debacle, our friends down at Bear Republic Brewery have filed a trademark infringement order against Central City Brewing, who are located here in British Columbia. Before getting into my dissection of this lawsuit I do wish to fully disclose that I know the people behind Central City Brewing, and am a fan of their beers. For a detailed breakdown of the lawsuit you can download the filed document here.

Above is a picture of both trademarkst. It’s true that arguments about both fonts and naming can be made. However, when using standard fonts found on almost any computer you can easily make the counter argument of coincidence. As for the names, it’s a stretch to assume Red Racer and Racer 5 have any significant relationship when compared to most craft beers. The sheer number of breweries using colors as denominators for their products is daunting, and the term Racer is vague; so much so one could argue AlesSmith’s Speedway Stout could also fall into this lawsuit if that were the case. Aside from this there is the blatant copyright infringement Bear Republic has done on their own part, creating a brand based off of the Speed Racer cartoon and its ever so famous car the Mach 5.

In the end, no matter how you feel about the lawsuit, I think we can all agree no good is going to come out of this. Until now, the craft beer community has been known to work together for the greater good. Companies like Avery Brewing and Russian River have figured out collaboration not litigation is the answer to a situation like this. I too believe the best thing these two breweries can do is work together to develop a collaboration ale. Ideally this would be released by both breweries, one in cans and the other in bottles. If you agree with me, please, email both companies and suggest this solution. We can not become a craft community divided if we are to survive.

All too often, lovers of craft beer are looked at in a negative way. The opinions vary; however, most commonly we are looked at as geeks, snobs, or neanderthals depending on who you ask. If we are going to go forward as a community, we need to do our best to dispel these myths and showcase our passion appropriately. I know many of you may take the approach that image doesn’t matter and that passion is all that counts; although there is some merit to that, one can never discount the effect of presentation.

Take for example, a recent business meeting I attended. One of the presenters is an utter genius and had a fantastic product, yet due to his unpolished presentation he came off as confused and rambling. Until he gets this end of his business dealt with, I feel he is going to have a lot more difficulty getting people to buy into him than he should get based on his merits.

I would say the state of the beer industry is not much unlike this presenter. Yes we have our share of people who present themselves well, but as a whole the industry needs a lot of work. One end of the spectrum we have the hardcore craft heads who geek out on the details, often forgetting the average person can’t tell the difference between lager and ale. Then, on the flip side, I hear about breweries employing marketing and sales people who don’t have a deep passion for beer and go about the business like any other 9-5. The combined result is both a push and pull where both the average person and passionate craft beer fan are turned off by one end of the spectrum or another.

So what’s the solution? Honestly, I would love to give one universal answer, but I don’t think there is a single cure-all out there. We could start by getting the right communicators involved in the business end of the process to teach both sides of the coin how to talk to one another. I find it offensive when someone working for a craft brewery hasn’t at least read Tasting Beer. At the same time appalling when your every day marco drinker is given barley wine as their first taste of craft and then looked at like an asshole because their pallet can’t handle it. If you’re a brewery and find you’re having trouble with this, I suggest you reach out to your local communicators and ask for some advice. I’m sure the likes of Sudsy Maggie, The Beer Wench, Andy The Beer Man, Thank Heaven for Beer, as well as many others would be glad to help. Heck, you could even go out on a limb and offer to employ one of them as your personal communicator; I promise you won’t be disappointed with the results.

Nano-Brewing is not exactly a new concept. That said, I don’t think that enough of us hop-heads are aware of the latest revolution in brewing. When trying to start a business, there is nothing wrong with starting small and growing organically. I think a lot of people out there look at starting their own brewery or brew pub and go “wow, there is no way I can afford to get into this.” Although by no means cheap, starting a nano-brewery could be the way to go if you are looking to make and sell beer.

What is a Nano-Brewery?

Nano-Breweries, for those that don’t know, are breweries that reside in very small spaces pumping out 20 gallon-ish batches of brew for kegs, casks, and possibly some small bottle runs. The people behind these businesses usually start off as home-brewers who wish to take things to the next level. Often, these breweries pump out a mere 100 barrels of beer a year due to the fact that they are weekend operations. Many of them survive on the fact that the buying local movement is growing on a daily basis and although they run small, they sell all their product and slowly gain a following. King 5 out of Seattle did a short piece on this back in April, you can view it here.

Brewing Equipment

Depending on your budget, goals, and the space you have available to you there are many options for brewing set ups. Aside from creating your own gravity fed system, there are also many commercial brew system options. These range from the Dog Fish Head favorite, Brew Magic from Sabco, starting at around $6,000 and going all the way up to a Bavarian Brew Tech Pilot System coming in around $75,000. Other notable options include the Electorbrewer and offerings from Pico Brewing Systems. Aside from the brew system, you will also want to consider other things like refrigeration for conditioning, hand bottling units, and keg fillers. As long as you can be creative and do your research, I’m sure you’ll find some slick deals on all of these things. If you doubt any of this, you can always take some advice from Mr. Dog Fish himself, Sam Calagione. Although this is an endorsment for the Brew Magic system, I think it’s safe to say that he’d encourage you to use any pilot system to get your business up and running.

Brewery Location

I think the most wonderful thing about starting a brewery this way is the fact you do not need to go lease a 10,000 square foot building at some astronomical cost. Most of these systems will fit perfectly into a garage along with the rest of your supplies and equipment. Ideally, you’d have more space, but when you’re trying to get a business off the ground you need to make some sacrifices. During my research, I have seen breweries that have started in only a couple hundred square feet. We’re talking brewhouses the size of janitors closets here. If you have access to around 500 square feet of space, you’re more or less good to go.

Getting the Word Out

Okay, so you’ve bought your brew system, you’ve found your space, you’ve brewed your first batch of beer – now what? Well, let’s face it, if you’re at this stage, you’re probably not some shlub off the street, meaning you’re more than likely to belong to organizations like CAMRA and the Brewers Association. Through these organizations you probably know some fellow brewers, a few pub owners, and a couple store managers. Us beer folk tend to stick together so get the word out. Many of these people will help you get your brewery off the ground and look at the situation as “the more the merrier.” From there I suggest you continue reading truecask.com and look out for the Marketing Beer series I recently started. I know that is a shameless plug, but come on – I have to throw one in every now and then.

Things to Keep in Mind

There is a lot I don’t know about this business. I am in a process of learning and am documenting it for all of you to see. With that in mind, you must be aware of other things like your local laws, distribution rules, business licensing, material cost, etc that I am not knowledgeable about. Do your research and reach out to those who have already successfully tread these waters before you. My go-to example would be the people behind Two Beers Brewing. They have gone through this exact process and will be more than happy to answer your questions whenever possible.  This is not an unachievable dream, it’s just going to take a lot of work and passion. Keep focused and I’ll keep documenting my learning experience as they come.

Recently, the Russell Brewing Company signed a five year sponsorship deal with the Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Centre, home of the Abbotsford Heat. You can read the full release here. This is not a particularly unusual occurrence but it got me thinking about how many breweries miss opportunities like this. If you’ve read the truecask.com About page, then you know my background is marketing, and although I have designs to do some consulting work for the industry, I also know that withholding information is not going to help me achieve the mission objective I state on that exact same About page. As a result I have decided to post my marketing musings for those in the industry to digest, refute, and possibly execute.

No Opportunity Is Too Small

As the Russell Brewing announcement sparked this post, I figure I will start with addressing the fact that no opportunity is too small. As we know, many larger companies battle to be able to sponsor events like the NHL, NFL, MLB, NBA, UFC, etc. Microbreweries tend to avoid things like this as the financial investment is far too great. Although I would never encourage a brewery to go out and try to sponsor something above their heads, there is something to be said about having the ability to align yourself with a similarly identified brand. Back in late August I posted about the Gastown Cask Carouse. This event was not exactly enormous, however the ripple effect that came out of it for R&B Brewing is something that can not be underestimated. For the cost of four casks (you brewers know thats not a lot of money), they managed to get media coverage from that event, and the ability to directly market to the eighty hardcore beer evangelists who attended. Initially you might consider return on investment to be not overly favourable; however, once the ripples begin to spread you might be surprised. I know about five of the people who attended that event. Of those five, a couple of them have now made R&B their go-to beer and another ordered a cask for his birthday party. When you start to consider that it’s quite possible the other 75 people who attended did similar things, the ROI starts to make sense. In the end, the lesson of the day is never underestimate the power of directly touching your consumer or you will miss a fantastic opportunity.

Ideas Of Every Size

It’s important to note that this idea is scalable. Not every brewery needs to strike deals with event centers like the one Russell Brewing did with the Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Centre. Nor does every brewery need to try and get their beer in every cask event possible, as there is something to be said for scarcity creating demand. With this in mind I will give you a couple ideas that pertain to this topic, for three different sizes of micro-brewery.

Small Micro-brewers: In this case the brewery is more than likely fairly new to market or has yet to break through that barrier of being local. Money may not be abundant, but much like with R&B Brewing, the product can replace a financial investment in the form of cash. Art shows, farmers markets, and other places macro-brewers might avoid would be great places to look for opportunities.

Small to Medium Micro-brewers: These are those breweries that have crossed that aforementioned threshold and have a little more capital to work with when it comes to marketing. Supporting things such as a beer organization like CAMRA, a larger event that aligns with your branding, or hosting your own event are all viable options at this point. A good example of this is when the New Belgium Brewing Company puts on a series of events called the Tour De Fat that align with their whole bike / beer branding. Now in this case many breweries may not have the capital to go that big, but I bet if they have similar branding they could sponsor an event like critical mass instead.

Medium to Large Micro-brewers: If a brewery has reached this point, it is probably one of the better known micro-breweries in a given region. Picture something along the lines of Southern Tier, Deschutes, or even Brooklyn. At this point these companies can touch their consumers in a similar that way Russell has. In fact, Russell has done this before, partnering with the BC Lions CFL team in order to create Lions Lager, a co-promoted brew that has quickly become the go-to game day brew for British Columbia football fans. Mirroring this would be ideal for some breweries that are looking to firmly establish themselves as the region’s most well known micro-brewer. It doesn’t just have to be tier two sports teams, but the target market of both sports franchises and micro-breweries tends to align nicely.

This is just a small taste of what a micro-brewery can do in order to compete with the big boys without having the budget to do so. I hope to make this an ongoing series of posts and look forward to being able to help the industry as a whole. This week the ideas were a little more traditional, but you can trust I will get into a lot of the social media marketing stuff I know you all want a bit more information on. If you have any questions, comments, or arguments you want to send my way, please feel free to contact me at any time; all my info is on the menu on the right hand column.

]]> http://truecask.com/2009/10/marketing-beer-vol-1-no-opportunity-is-too-small/feed/ 3 http://truecask.com/2009/09/something-is-brewing/ http://truecask.com/2009/09/something-is-brewing/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:50:20 +0000 cbjerrisgaard http://truecask.com/?p=781
Since the Great Canadian Beer Festival things have been somewhat quiet here on truecask.com. Trust me when I say that this is for good reason. That day marks what might become either an enormous paradigm shift in the BC beer scene, or a small blip on the craft radar. At this point it’s hard say [...]]]>

Since the Great Canadian Beer Festival things have been somewhat quiet here on truecask.com. Trust me when I say that this is for good reason. That day marks what might become either an enormous paradigm shift in the BC beer scene, or a small blip on the craft radar. At this point it’s hard say what the result will be; however, you’ll be able to track the progress on the way to the end result as I will be documenting the process.

So what the hell am I talking about anyway? Obviously, during the course of this blogging adventure, I have associated myself with not only a ton of craft beer fans, but also some very knowledgeable industry people. Through this network, a collection of us have formed in order to develop possibly the most ‘core’ craft brewery north of the border, or at least thats the goal.

Some may consider this mission statement a slight on our local brewers; please do not take it as such – we love the BC craft scene. That said, we feel there is a hole in our market that’s ready to be filled. For the most part, every brewery in BC is bottling similar beers using the old formula of lager, pale ale, and IPA, combined with seasonal and specialty offerings. The quality varies depending on the specialty of the brewery, everyone does reasonably well, and there is nothing wrong with this system; however, the last thing BC needs is another brewer trying to play in this space.

What the scene is in need of is a brewery ready to take that next step and commit their entire capacity to big interesting beers. Terms like small batch, limited run, and bottle fermented will become synonymous with the brand. Efforts will be made to appease the pallet of the hardcore beer fan, offering them the efforts they can only get at special events on a daily basis. Branding & marketing efforts will be focused, and not just left as an afterthought. Passion and quality will not be sacrificed for the sake of volume and sales.

I’m sure many people will consider this idea a pipe dream, stating that there is not enough of a market in BC for a brewery like this to survive. I’m also sure many people said the same thing to breweries like Hair of the Dog, Green Flash, and Lost Abbey. The key to making this all happen will be not letting this idea die in the mash. The idea has been set, the goal has been identified, and the group’s abilities have been assessed. Now it is time to put pen to paper and construct the business plan. Step one is in the books – I look forward to telling you about step two.

All across the internet, articles like this one from The Business Edition have been popping up reporting how America’s biggest breweries, MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch, will be raising prices. One can only imagine that the rest of the macro-breweries will follow suit, as this is clearly in response to the fact that sales of macro-beers keep dropping while micro-beer sales are on the rise.

Instead of trying to compete in terms of quality, these breweries have opted to up their prices, recovering their losses via the consumer’s pocketbook. Although some may see this as a logical move, it is very short-sighted and will hurt them in the long run. Yes, raising prices will help the balance sheets appear normal to appease their shareholders, but as time goes on, all they will have done is take away one of their key competitive advantages over micro breweries. Right now the big breweries have price, volume, marketing, and distribution channels to leverage. By raising the price they not only negate that advantage, but will in turn lessen their volume and upset their distributors.

The question is what comes next. Thanks to this move, micro breweries’ will be more competitive dollar for dollar. Now if they can prove their craft beer is better than the mass market swill produced by the big boys, they have a serious chance of stealing even more market share. The only disadvantage is the big breweries still maintain the marketing budgets to convince people what they are buying is the best out there. The craft brewers out there have to use this small window to their advantage by getting out in their local scene and converting macro drinkers before the big breweries marketing budgets can convince them the price increase is justified.

Before you click the back button and never return to truecask.com for stating such blasphemy, please hear me out. Coors is known for making fizzy yellow beer and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing. Perhaps we should reconsider this assessment, dropping the latter and leaving ‘Coors is known for making fizzy yellow beer’.

I say this because recently Coors has done a couple of really cool things that have caught my eye. These are things that craft brewers should really look into if they want to expand their business:

They found out who the cool kids are, and gave them some cash

Voleurz is a clothing company that all the cool kids wear in the resort town of Whistler BC. It’s still fairly underground due to the fact they have low manufacturing runs, but they are doing interesting things to promote their product. One of these things is a yearly full length action sports video that they put on Vimeo for free. The title sponsor of these free action sports videos? Coors Light. It may not be the biggest project they hitched their wagon too, but I promise you the return on investment they get from the people involved in the video alone is worth it.

They placed controversial & targeted advertising

Truth be told I will hardly ever recommend advertising on billboards to pretty much anyone. The return on investment is so low its painful. That said, with their most recent billboard placed in western Canada Coors has managed to get an amazing amount of buzz. By attacking Toronto in their ads, not only did they connect with the people out west, who at least humorously say they resent Toronto, they pissed off enough people from Toronto to turn it into a discussion. The true take away of this is that controversy, as long as its mildly humorous and not malicious, only brings you more attention.

They are buying ads in places you would not expect them to buy ads

Yardbarker is a site where anyone can blog about sports. Coors has decided that this would be a great place to buy advertisement. Now I’m not a fan of Yardbarker but at the same time this is where the Coors demographic goes to talk all things sports. Its a no brainer that it would be a good, cheap place to get eyeballs. I know Right Brain will be buying a couple silver bullets the next time he’s at the bottle shop.

I’m not saying craft brewers should try to copy Coors. What I am saying is that for craft brewers to expand their market they have to look at marketing from new angles. Its no longer a situation where if you have all the money you have all the eyeballs. With the world of twitter, facebook, blogging, online videos, etc you can only make your brand stronger by getting out there and exploring new options.

What starts off sounding like a rather personal question is actually becoming an issue for beer lovers in British Columbia. This past weekend the Vancouver Sun reported on how there is no such thing as a true pint in our province. Although this is a substantial issue, it’s just a small part of the beer drinker’s pain here in British Columbia.

So what’s the problem? Well, if you recall back to my conversation with Garrett Oliver, its difficult for people to export their beer into Canada usually resulting in expensive prices for out of country craft. Sadly, things are only going to get more costly with a harmonized sales tax coming shortly after the olympics raising the price of beer another 7%. Add to this the fact we have no such thing as happy hour, bars face restrictive and expensive liquor licensing requirements (as described by this article), and you’ll start to see that being a passionate beer drinker is not exactly easy north of the 49th parallel.

Although some people may see all of this as a bunch of small issues, it’s the collective effect that is crippling BC’s craft beer scene. It’s impossible to expect a newcomer to find their passion for beer when they are forced to purchase small sleeves labeled as pints for an exorbitant amount of money, and then told to go home at midnight. Not only that but they don’t even get to pick from a respectable variety. I’m all about supporting local, but to appreciate what we have here we need competition. Expansion of this scene will only happen when people get to taste real beer and expand their pallets. Once they understand and love craft beer their natural evolution will be to support local.

No one is going to do this for us. If you’re a true craft lover and you want to see the BC scene grow you need to go out and support it. Even if you’re not a resident of BC but want to see the scene expand to the point where you can taste our beers in your bars, you need to support the BC scene. Talk to the good people at CAMRA to see what you can do in order to help change these laws. We may not be able to fix all, or even any of them, but without people trying we go from a small change to no chance at all. Its either that or we all have to move to Portland.

I recently stated on Twitter that I thought Granville Island Brewery was becoming less craft friendly and that it was good to see them sponsoring CAMRA Vancouver. Some people came to their defense, including their own twitter account. Due to their willingness to interact with their community, and critics, I decided I should further research my opinion and see if it was valid. What I found was encouraging. It turns out they are members of the BC Craft Brewers Association, continue to produce limited release brews, and were the first micro brewery in Canada. Although I was aware of some of these facts I feel my opinion had become skewed due to what I believe is an uninspired catalog of everyday beers. Why I bring this up is because it posed an interesting question. When is a brewery no longer craft?

Sleeman Breweries is a good example of a brewery that may have tumbled down this slippery slope. The original Sleeman Breweries ceased operations in the 1930’s but was resurrected by the great grandson of John H. Sleeman in the late 1980’s. By most accounts it was a quality microbrewery up until 1996 when they merged with Okanagan Springs Brewery and went public. At this point things started to change. In my opinion this public offering resulted in them caring more about shareholder value than the quality of their beer. In time they became more and more macro to the point that they were purchased by Sapporo Breweries in 2006. Today Sleeman Breweries is one of the largest ‘Canadian’ breweries and anything micro about them is a distant memory; in fact, they are so macro that they even brew Pabst Blue Ribbon for the Canadian market.

In the end I suppose the answer to the question is this: when a brewery starts caring more about their accounting ledger than they do about quality, then they are no longer craft. I imagine its hard to maintain high levels of volume and quality at the same time. Trying to do so would greatly eat into a breweries profits, and when you’re a public company, that is unacceptable. Finding a balance may be the only way for a brewery to grow, make profits, and still maintain their craft roots. For example, although I feel the everyday beers from Granville Island Breweries are uninspired, I do believe the combination of their seasonal and limited release beers do enough to recover their image. I absolutely love the Lions Winter Ale and recently enjoyed the Raspberry Wheat Ale limited release. Maybe the key is to produce large volume beers that perform for the ledger, while keeping limited release craft offerings out there for hard core hop heads to enjoy.