The Campaign

With craft beer, consumers believe that the smaller or more grass roots the brewery is, the more legitimate the beer is. Our client, Lion Breweries while not small at all, produced its own line of craft beers called Crafty Beggars, with a (mostly true) backstory about 9 brewers who decided the world needed a better kind of craft beer. We then proceeded to create a campaign that made people believe we were just as passionate and protective of beer as anyone else. To keep our precious beer safe, we launched Crafty Beggars Beer insurance – allowing anyone drinking Crafty Beggars to claim insurance if they lost or broke their beers for any reason Oh, and in NZ a Crafty Beggar isn’t a homeless person who knits, it’s slang for someone who is resourceful and a little cheeky.

Success of the Campaign

We built a fan base from 0 to 9,000 likes in a little under 3 weeks. And more than 3200 claims were made using the app, with an average engagement of 3.5 minutes. Bear in mind, there’s only 2 milion adults in NZ. Just as importantly it allowed a big brewery to initiate a dialogue with customers the way a smaller outfit would, giving us further credibility in an industry where authenticity is paramount.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

After initiating conversation with fans on facebook on what would make beer better, we suggested beer insurance. Once we let the positive reaction build, we launched a facebook app, allowing people to make claims. At the same time a radio and street poster campaign swung into gear, driving people to the site. Online ads also drove traffic. Once people had made their claim, they could post to their wall that their claim was processing. Then once approved they could post the whole finished claim, tagging in witnesses they’d named. Finally those successful claimants received their product, with beers being sent out and in many cases stimulating even more facebook dialogue.