The Campaign

This is the story of Australia's first crowd brewed beer. We went on a mission to find what made beer perfect to drink and bottle it. Part research project, part mobile game, part brewing brief, and part question to the nation - the Perfect Lager Project gave birth to not one, but two potentially perfect lagers delivered in a unique 'split case' so beer drinkers could try both beers. But there can only be one perfect, so we handed the decision over the experts - the public... and fulled the decision through the media. An idea perfectly set up to deliver facts and information to the beer, technology and general news writers, that ultimately delivered value to consumers.

The Brief

We needed to get the trade media and beer influencers on board, and overcome their cynicism that a commercial wine producer could create a quality beer. These included beer bloggers, celebrity chefs who specialised in cooking with beer, and even the star of a famous ballroom dancing film, who was known to brew vegemite beer. We also needed to deliver significant consumer word of mouth, both with influential consumers and with the mass market to give us the halo effect.

Results

Almost 10% of the annual target ‘pre-sold’ before the beer had even launched. Top 30 iPhone app in iTunes Australia by downloads. Almost 10M earned media reach. Over 1M fans and friends of fans reached via social media channels. Almost 800 beer ratings were collected from the app and almost 10,000 data points were given to Casella Brewers for analysis. Call to arms video received over 50,000 organic views on YouTube. Over 30 different publications wrote about the launch.

Execution

We started by creating an iPhone app that allowed people to rate the beers they drank as they drank them. We then recruited highly social influencers and made a call to arms video to drive people to download the app. Casella Brewers took the data and used it to produce two potentially perfect lagers. Packs were split 50/50 and people were asked to vote to keep the brew they preferred. We also held a media event and sent out 50 personalised ‘talking head’ video invites to drum up media support.

The Situation

Without a 200 year old brewery, we had to build credibility & authenticity into a wine makers first ever beer. So our only option was to use PR as a platform for talking about the future of beer. Reference the past, and the behaviours of current beer drinkers in order to set up what the perfect beer of the future could be.

The Strategy

This was about leveraging word of mouth at every interaction with the campaign. We created a technology platform that meant each beer rating was automatically spread via Facebook. We also created striking visuals (the split) which went from the packaging, all the way through to the media event - designed to highlight the 'decision' to be made, and encouraging the media to make their own.