Drinking In Praise for Saranac Beer
Case Study: Saranac Blogger Dinner 10/2009
Objective: To raise awareness and publicity surrounding the 12 Beers of Winter pack using online communities and blogger outreach. By reaching out to top craft beer bloggers, we wanted to have them spread the word about the new products using Social Media channels rather than traditional media publications.
Research and Outreach: Bloggers were selected based on their engagement, quality of content, and location. Romanelli Communications was in charge of researching which bloggers were influencers or experts in craft beer. A great deal of attention was also paid toward bloggers who represented a niche (Kosher Beers) as well as those who used a variety of social platforms to distribute their message (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc).
Product Launch Event: Selected members of the craft brewing blogger community as well as a small amount of trade media writers throughout the northeast were invited to the F.X. Matt Brewery for an exclusive tour, tasting, and gourmet dinner with beer pairings that highlighted each of the beers in the pack.
Guests were allowed (and encouraged) to bring video recorders or laptops to the event for documentation purposes. They were under no obligation to write or blog favorably about the experience, but we hoped they would give an honest account of the event and their personal impressions of each of the beers.
SaranacBlogger Dinner -
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
KosherBeers:
Maple Porter Review
TheBrewAuthority:
Blogger Dinner Podcast
12 Beers of Winter Review
ImaSoFat: YouTube Shorts of the Saranac Blogger Dinner
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Results: Each of the bloggers that were guests of the Brewery expressed their enthusiasm in that they had never been reached out to personally by any craft brewery or given this type of experience. Blog posts about the event were generated by each of our guests, and mostly broken up into multiple parts, extending the life of that content. In addition to print blogs, a 20 minute podcast and YouTube videos also were posted about the event and the beers.
The content that was posted by each blogger was also highlighted by Saranac through their official Social Media channels and echoed by other consumers of craft beer through re-tweets on Twitter, Facebook posts, comments and links back to the Saranac official website. More importantly, Saranac was able to build relationships with those who are writing and blogging about craft beer every day as well as authentically and transparently let the online community spread the word that Saranac is Great Beer.