Recently over the past decade there has been a shift in what a average beer drinker will buy at the liquor store. Since the rise of the microbrewer there has been a change in tastes among the young and youthful. They have developed a palet ranging from the oakiest stouts to differing lagers. This sudden change has caught big beer brands off guard not only in how to market to their newest customers, but also in adapting to the change of taste among beer drinkers.
Molson and budweiser are one of the most popular providers of beer in canada currently, targeting the rising new demographic of beer drinkers in the 18-25 bracket. Their campaigns are often centered around the concept of celebrations(aka parties), hockey, or being associated with canada in some way.
They have had successful campaigns that have targeted this new demographic often sponsoring major events such as the world juniors in edmonton putting emphasis on their current clientele, and ignoring the rising trend of new savy beer drinkers. This is not to say that these major beer distributors have not looked into specialty beers, such as producing molsons 67 calorie beer for people concious of trying beer, as well as many of their unknown international beers. I just believe that they have not taken a serious look at the rising impact of microbrewers in canada.
Now saying that I believe they can have a positive impact among young beer drinkers in more than one way. Often when looking at a microbrewery; I have often found that the brewery has close tie ins with the community such as through local beer events at restaurants or beer making guilds . As well as that these microbreweries often are current and up to date with their social media channels often communicating within where there brewery is creating a strong loyalty to their product offering. This is done through newsletters, twitter, facebook, and sometimes different up and coming social media platforms.
Depending on who molson, and budweiser wants to target to (Their original clientel of young hockey players or up and coming microbrewery generation) they should gear there campaign around the strategy of POST(People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology).
People – Since either of these companies will most likely not deviate from trying to attract a different customer basis while remaining one of the most popular beer suppliers in canada. I believe that they could work on a solution that will be able to utilize some of their current tools towards their young demographic of current customers as well as attracting the highly involved micro brewer lovers.
Objectives- Some objectives that any major beer corporation would be interested in is increasing market share consistently. I believe that they would be interested in as well as any other major corporation in retaining brand loyalty and value.
Strategy- Since many of your micro brewing competitors often utilize online forums(such as blogs, e newsletters, etc.). It may be wise to place yourself in a strategic position online. Not necessarily with blogs, but through other social networking sites. The one that comes to my mind for this current situation would be to use a combination of Facebook, flickr, twitter, and p interest. The reason why these companies should use the social media websites, is two reasons: 1. Generally when your primary demographics go to or are watching something related towards hockey they often post it on social media site to show off to friends where they are, and provide content from said location. 2. Often when posting content that they have viewed during the course of the game. More often than not it will be a picture of friends together celebrating with or without a beer.
Technology- The primary technology that I believe they should use would be to use social media sites that offer tags or highlight pictures. Specifically P interest. The reason why I refer to this site specifically is based on a few factors. Since many of the demographic they are targeting is photogenic they should focus on a site that offers: easy to view pictures, a site that has a community that interchangeably repost among themselves and are highly active on the site, and a site that is relatively popular or growing in numbers. The following link proves that p interest is more than capable of doing all of these.
http://info.rjmetrics.com/blog/bid/52877/Pinterest-Data-Analysis-An-Inside-Look
For those of you who don’t know about p interest it is a site where you can post an image on a digital board along with other people related to a specific interest. When clicking upon the image you can be sent to a site of some sort usually a blog. What i suggest for Molson or budweiser to do is to make a contest or a promotion where you get consumers to send in there favourite images with molson or budweiser, which then links back to their site. If one of these corporations did this they may be able to attract a large part of the social media market before it is taken over by the rising micro brewers. While using a easy to use, and rising in use social media.
Alastair Lillico 