Atlanta Brewing recently was crowned by the Craft Beer Marketing Awards in the category: Best Use of Social Media/Cause Related, and Brewer caught up with Marketing Director Cameron Davis as she shared what was learned over the past few years in making a partnership work best for online promotions.
Years ago, the brewery began working with the Georgia Aquarium to focus on research and conservation of marine life. Even before the name shift back to Atlanta Brewing in 2018, Red Brick Brewing has worked with the aquarium to release beers highlighting animals that the facility cares for, that includes beers such as Puffin Chocolate Porter, Whale Shark IPA, Sea Lion Sour, and Octopus Brown Ale.
Partnerships
A lot of that promotion of the product and the effort was keyed by partnering with the aquarium’s PR staff.
“This is definitely a partnership that benefits us both,” Davis said. “For us, we are able to use the aquarium’s huge advertising and PR teams and have the ability to promote our beer through their channels.
“For them, they reach a new audience and are able to raise money for their nonprofit arm through our beer sales.”
Atlanta Brewing did some fun and creative social media posts with the aquarium by allowing the animals to interact with the beer cans.
“I learned that penguins love shiny things, which worked out great for our aluminum cans,” Davis said.
Influencers
The brewery leveraged some of the aquarium’s PR contacts to get a few influencers that Atlanta Brewing had not been able to work with in the past.
Davis said since that relationship was created it has been able to continue partnerships with some of those influencers apart from the Aquarium series as well.
Picking the Right Mediums
Davis said that posts that saw the most traction online were typically video.
“[It] works best for us in general, and that doesn’t change with this partnership,” she said. “We also found that any image that displayed a cute animal did really well.”
Using Criticism Effectively
At the beginning of this partnership, Atlanta was still using plastic ringers for the beers. Although the rings were photodegradable ones, Davis said most consumers did not know that. Over socials, both Atlanta and the aquarium received some negative feedback along the lines of ’how can you promote sustainability and conservation of marine life and use these plastic ringers.’
”We agreed,” Davis said. ”Last year we transitioned all of our aquarium beers into fully degradable cardboard ringers, and since have moved all of our canned offerings into this format.
”The reception we received on social media was amazing — people were so supportive and excited about this decision.”
The takeaway, Davis said, is that businesses are always going to get people complaining on social media, it’s just the nature of the platform. Being able to wade through what is a true concern and what is just complaining is something that can make your sales and marketing much stronger.
”Recognizing your consumers’ concerns and answering them, then posting about it in a way that makes them feel like they were heard is a powerful tool,” she said.
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