Background

Our brand currently leads the craft beer market in China, but craft beer is less than 1% of the total Chinese beer market. In order to continue to grow the market, it is imperative to recruit new consumers to the category. There exist a general lack of awareness of what craft beer even is, so before recruiting new consumers you first have to introduce them to the concept of "craft beer". COVID made this even more challenging, because it forced consumers in-home away from traditional points of craft consumption. The idea then became to leverage our EC platforms to bring a genuine craft experience to consumers’ homes, with the specific mission of recruiting and educating new consumers. To do this we decided to create a new product that could provide a complete craft experience to in-home occasions--The Craft Starter Pack .

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

We realized we already had three distinctive beer styles in our core range. Building on these three styles we selected another three beers from our brewhouses, to complete a six-pack with six different variants. These variants would all be representative of key craft beer categories, so consumers could have a complete craft experience with one purchase, making it the perfect option for people unfamiliar to different craft beer styles. We also shrank the serving size from our traditional format of 500ml cans to 330ml cans to encourage more trial of each different beer. This provided the perfect platform for people looking to elevate their drinking experience but unsure of where to start, to begin exploring the world of craft beer. We also included a tasting booklet in each set to guide them through the experience, and included a survey for them to directly communicate their opinions to us.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

We partnered with a local EC platform to gather insight to the potential consumer makeup of this product. Looking at the results we were able to determine recruitment of more female and GEN Z consumer, both traditionally non-craft consumers. Using this information we were able to develop a social media strategy around platforms, social topics, and drinking occasions that would more likely engage these consumer bases

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

We leveraged geo-targeted KOL’s and KOC‘s to help build life-style and craft occasion cues around the pack. The majority of the focus went into leveraging a shopping guidance platform and consumer trials across social platforms. The synergy of these two initiatives help to establish high quality content that underscored the uniqueness of the pack, which was then authenticated by real consumers giving feedback that resonated more deeply and felt more genuine to other interested consumers. This was then anchored by a PR release showcasing the Craft Starter Pack as a launch of our new VBI to build excitement among new audiences who hadn’t previously been exposed to the brand. All of this built up a great foundation for the sales push on the key Chinese EC holiday of 11.11.

List the results (30% of vote)

Within the first 6 weeks the Craft Starter Pack received over 135million impressions. In its first month of launching it occupied 27% of the total craft sales on our EC flagship store. We found that 85% of the consumers who had purchased this product were new consumers to our EC flagship store. Our Gen Z consumers nearly doubled increasing from 8% to 15%. Female consumers' consumption increased by 13%. Not only did we recruit new consumers but the sales and performance of this SKU put it as our 2nd best selling SKU.