Welcome to the Certified Cold Beer Crew Blog!

This is our final Blog post for our Certified Cold beer Blog. We have researched our 8 favourite beer brands and discovered some interesting facts throughout our analyses. We learned about SEO, Keywords, Blogging, Content Marketing, Analytics, Hootsuite and many other cool things along the way.

During our 5 week campaign we used Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in an engaging way to direct more traffic to our blogs.

Attached is a video of what we learned over our campaign including a detailed analysis of our analytics reports, overview of our Hootsuite and social media accounts and we get to share with you each of our content marketing campaigns for our beers.

Thank you to everyone who read our blogs and supported us in our endeavours over the last few months. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2ObPq2FEJY&feature=youtu.be

Coors Light Original Content Marketing Campaign

Coors Light Original Content Marketing Campaign

My idea for an original content marketing campaign is for Coors Light to host an online contest on Instagram called the

Coors Light Fun in the Summer Contest.

Contestants will create original creative videos showcasing themselves enjoying cold refreshing Coors Light in fun and unique ways while enjoying all that summer has to offer. Contestants will first need to follow the Coors Light Instagram Page and then upload their videos using #funinthesummer.

This campaign will help Coors Light with brand awareness as well as increase their number of Instagram followers rapidly in a short amount of time.

Examples of creative videos could be: Zip lining while enjoying a Coors Light, 5 people chugging a Coors Light and then doing a back flip into the lake or slip and sliding down a hill on an inflatable while drinking a Coors Light.

Outrageous but not illegal activities will have the best chance at success.

The top 200 winners from across Canada and the United States will win free airfare and all-inclusive accommodations on the Coors Light Cruise Ship for a 4 day party in the Caribbean featuring popular bands and DJs.

The target audience would be Canadians of legal drinking age. Most entries would probably be made by individuals in the 19-35 range, but all entries are given an equal shot.

We will be promoting this contest across multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well as running a 30 second commercial on television during June and July. 

We are looking for 1,000,000 entries between June 1 and July 31.

This campaign will be featured in the heat of the summer when cold refreshing beer is in high season. 

The additional promotion showcasing Coors Light as a fun party beverage during the summer will be great for the brand’s image while helping to increase summer beer sales although this promotion is not asking anyone to buy anything. Just like the ice bucket challenge went viral on Facebook we hope the Coors Light Fun in the Summer Contest will be the talk of the nations this summer.

Bud Light Content Marketing

·         The marketing campaign I would create for Bud Light is “Become Part of our Bud Light Party”

·         The idea is the user who creates the best Bud Light Political Party viral video gets to join our current promotional campaign “The Bud Light Party” with Seth Rogen and his two political colleagues; and also receives backstage passes to the next event Bud Light sponsors.

·         The goal of this marketing campaign would be to increase our social media presence and receive more likes on Facebook, followers on Twitter and subscribers on YouTube.

·         We would launch this promotion when the post-secondary semester ends; around the end of April.

·         We would promote this marketing campaign on all social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

·         The campaign will attract its audience through sponsored ads on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. It will acquire and engage our audience through captivating marketing techniques.

Bud Light Fan Pages

Facebook

·         https://www.facebook.com/groups/95858856210/

·         On this page you can find out about events where Bud Light will be present.

·         Fundraising and charity work are posted on this Facebook page.

·         This page serves as a communication method for people that all enjoy drinking Bud Light to contact and plan events with each other.

Instagram

·         https://www.instagram.com/ttownbudgirls/

·         Ttownbudgirls is a Bud Light fan-made Instagram page.

The type of content you can find on their page consists of Bud Light-related events, pictures of people drinking Bud Light at social gatherings and the latest Bud Light promotions!

Sleeman's ULTIMATE Content Marketing Campaign!

                                                                                                                                                        Now, now, I know exactly what you’re thinking after reading that title…What in God’s name is that blogger thinking to creating the ultimate content marketing campaign and on top of that doing it for Sleeman Brewery, the least known beer brand in North America maybe even in Canada? Well my fellow readers, anybody can have dreams but I will explain to you what Sleeman can implement to have the potential to gain consumer engagement with all their social media platforms

Sleeman beer is known to be a local beer brand that is head quartered in Guelph, Ontario but still there product quality of beer is just as good as other famous Canadian brands that are high in the market. When looking back at their social media performance we can all agree that there not that well with having effective digital marketing strategies and getting the best results when posting content on their social media platforms. So here is my idea of a campaign that they could be implemented to their brand.

Idea

                                       

To create a promotional campaign that require consumer engagement on all social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram…heck even YouTube and Snapchat would be good for this. My idea is to introduce 3 new Sleeman beer flavours that will have a question mark on each bottle. The idea of this is for consumers to try the new flavors but also use social media to let us know how they feel about it and come up with a new name for the mystery flavor beer by using the #SleemansMysteryName to enter. You can tweet or post about it or make a video and share it to the whole world to be a part of this amazing contest. After a certain period, we will discontinue accepting requests and pick 3 winners. Those 3 winners will all have the opportunity to have their mystery name on our new bottle along with their social media username listed on the bottle. Hold on, you guys thought that was it? These winners will also receive a lifetime supply of our new flavoured product and will also get free VIP passes to our Sleeman Speakeasy event that brings you back to the prohibition era and give you a chance to play casino games and be a part of live music events. How’s that for a content marketing campaign? Will you be a part of it? That’s what I thought!

Audience

This competition is for all our beer lovers both male and female who love winning prizes and love using social media. 

Purpose and Goal

I feel like this would be a good idea to help Sleeman get known to the internet world and create brand awareness for the company. With that being said, if all goes well this well help Sleeman not only attract consumers but also increase their following on their social media pages, get more feedback on the content they post and at the end of it all increase sales of their new and existing beer products.

                                          

When will you launch?

My plan for Sleeman to launch this campaign is right when summer starts so we can kick start the summer into releasing a statement about the contest for everybody to get involved and release the 3 new beers into the market for everybody to purchase and try out. I also plan to hold the Sleeman Speakeasy event around New Year’s Eve for everybody to be a part of the music live events and be a part of the classical them event which I believe fits perfectly for the New Year’s theme.

I have strong belief that this implementation could be a big hit for this summer and a good strategy to get Sleeman out there into the internet world and into the beer market. Let us know what you think in the comments below or any ideas you guys may have and why it would be a great idea. Cheers from the beer crew!

Guinness Fan Pages

Guinness Facebook Fan Page 

is called Guinness Fans Funchal.

https://www.facebook.com/Guinness-Fans-Funchal-174399612662461/

It hasn’t been updated since 2014, but in its day it was really well done. It only has 93 likes but for a fan page it looks pretty official.  I’d say they pretty much use the 50/50 rule when displaying their content. They feature lots of pictures of their actual products or distilleries and pictures of interesting events or pictures of random things that have to do with Guinness. This is one of the more interesting fan pages I’ve come across.

Guinness Twitter Fan Page

https://twitter.com/fansGuiness?lang=en

"Guinness Fans" is the only fan page I could find on Twitter for Guinness. It was pretty terrible. Just a bunch of retweets from page called MindSet. None of it was in English. No interesting original content. They only have 2 followers… I can see why.

Guinness Instagram Fan Page

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/guinnessfan/

Guinness’s Instagram fan page is also small but has a nice vibe. Only 42 posts but the most recent post was 2 days ago, so it is more current than many fan pages out there. There are pictures from different parts of the world and in different languages. Mostly the posts are people enjoying Guinness or showing bars where Guinness is sold. 

Heineken Fan Pages

Facebook

·        

·         On the unofficial Heineken page, the viewer can find out all information related to Heineken. Including: videos, new information, and promotions.

·         https://www.facebook.com/HeinekenKohn/

Vimeo

·         

·         The unofficial Heineken Vimeo page has a variety of fan made videos regarding Heineken. The purpose is for entertainment purposes only.

·         https://vimeo.com/53678764

Bud Light vs Heineken on YouTube

Bud Light

·         Bud Light posts a new set of videos about every two months.

·         Bud Light’s YouTube channel has a wide variety of content types. Within its last 10 posts, it has one how-to video, music videos and interesting content related to Bud Light. For example, there are videos of celebrities like UFC athletes, singers and NFL athletes telling stories where Bud Light was involved.

·         Bud Light’s most successful post was “#BudLightLiving True Stories-UFC”.

o   It received 9 likes and 511,400 views.

·        

·         The reason this video was so successful was probably because they released this video right before a big UFC event. Their fan base was eagerly waiting for the event and Bud Light launched a UFC themed video that satisfied their UFC craving.

·         In the video description they have a link to their promotional website http://www.budlightlivingline.com/.

Heineken

·         Heineken’s last 10 posts have been spread out through a one month period. However, the spacing between their other videos varies; with some having a month or two in between.

·         Heineken posts videos related to soccer with soccer stars featured in the video. They also post humorous and entertaining content affiliated with its promotional campaigns with the end goal of retaining brand awareness.

·        

·         Its most successful video was “Heineken |The Dilemma”. As a viral video attempt from Heinken, the video was essentially a prank played on a an individual involving a his group of friends and embarrassing him in front of the whole stadium in the EUFA Champion’s League game (a soccer team that Heineken sponsors). The video received almost a million views and received 3K likes.

Prank videos created by large companies always do well, even more so when it relates to large soccer tournaments like in this video’s case.

Stella Artois Fan Page with a hint of Sleeman Fan Page explained...More like Fan WEBSITES!

After all the virtual conversations we had in the past about comparing Sleeman and Stella Artois we would assume that the discussion of fan pages would be talked about right? WRONG!

After long research hours of looking through for any possible fan accounts created on any social platforms that were discussed in past blogs but YouTube. I later found out that Sleeman Brewery doesn't have any associated fan pages but Stella Artois…well they don’t have any fan pages either...well they do have other websites where fans talk about their brand, that’s got to be something right….right?

                      

Above is a screenshot of what exactly I'm talking about. There are multiple websites which allows consumers or people on the internet to go on these websites and post their opinions/ratings about Stella Artois beer products and how they felt about testing the product out. Not only are there these websites but there’s also blogs like ours that post content similar to our cold certified beer blog which is discussing about the brand and talk about any activity that Stella Artois has been a part of or an analysis of their business activity and products. The same can go with Sleeman with the exception that their fans are more involved with writing about them in their blogs then having created website where they can create discussion threads. Another website that I would expect to get more attention are beer fans who make reviews on YouTube which you can see the video below where a YouTuber by the name of Gregsbeerreviews talks about his thoughts and opinion when tasting the famous Stella Artois beer. So with all of this being said, is it a bad thing that both Sleeman and Stella Artois don’t have fan social media accounts/pages? Well I guess I’ll leave that up to you guys to answer.

My objective throughout this blog post is to try to engage our fellow readers on what to expect on the “fan pages” that Sleeman and Stella Artois are encouraged to have. So a couple things I could mention theoretically if these brands were to have fan pages is to expect similar content that is posted on review sites or blog sites like ours which is personal opinions and arguments on how we feel about both their products and their marketing strategies.

I do apologize for not being able to strongly educate you guys into the expectations for Sleeman and Stella Artois’ fan pages but I hope this gave you enough information on what to you could expect is they theoretically had fan pages created. If there’s one thing I learned through this blog post is that I was able to create this blog post with the proper criteria I wanted to discuss and unbelievably did it in 457 words and counting…461, 462, 463…Well you guys get the point. Let me know if there is anybody out there who can find one, Cheers!

Sleeman vs Stella Artois on YouTube

This social media platform that will be talked about in this discussion is different from others because it requires using effective images and videos more than creating written content like they did on Facebook and Twitter.
                                                                                                

After looking at both YouTube channels from both these brands, it is well agreed that both brands are as effective and efficient as they are on their other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. When looking at both their channels, you’ll be able to see that Stella Artois has been a part of YouTube longer than Sleeman has and has more of a following but still post like 2-3 times a month while Sleeman’s content performance has been a lot slower from them only posting about 8 times this year! The posting game clearly favours Stella Artois over Sleeman Brewery. When looking into their channel more and analyzing the type of content the post both brands post very common content which include promotion videos, company events, celebrity endorsement videos and interviews with members of the company.

In the description area, Stella Artois shows a high performance result than Sleeman by linking to other sites for their #BuyALadyADrink campaign and other social media platforms for their audience to follow, Stella Artois also uses description to describe the video and the purpose of the video. The one area hat Stella Artois needs to improve on is incorporating keywords and tags into the video to attract more people and increase awareness for the video. Sleeman on the other hand doesn’t use much in the description category, which include not adding tags or keywords or even explaining to the audience the purpose of the video.

When comparing the best videos between the two historic brands, you can see that Stella Artois’ “Host Beautifully” commercial has won with receiving more feedback than Sleeman did with their famous “Sleeman Speakeasy” commercial. Below are videos of both commercials. Stella Artois “Host Beautfifully” received about 6.6 million views, 57 likes and 12 comments while Sleeman’s speakeasy received 400K views, 9 likes and 9 comments.

                                                                     

Have your say and let us know who you think should win the YouTube content game! 

Coors Light Fan Pages

Coors Light has a Facebook Fan Page 

called “Fans of Coors Light”

https://www.facebook.com/Fans-of-Coors-Light-228605657363/?fref=ts

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     It is very old and not kept up to date. It doesn’t look like much effort was put into this page. They have a couple small posts about how Coors Light is great, a bunch of pictures they probably found in a Google search, and that’s about it.

Coors Light’s Instagram Fan Page

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/coorslightfan/

This fan page has 36 posts. It is not updated very regularly. Last time it was updated was 16 weeks ago. It is mostly pictures of people enjoying Coors Light, and my personal favourite post, a beer can chicken!

Coors Light Pinterest Fan Page

https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=coors%20light&rs=remove&0=coors%7Ctyped&1=light%7Ctyped&remove_refine=fanpage%7Ctyped

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Coors Light doesn’t seem to have a Twitter fan page. I’ve searched and searched and can’t find one at all. So I went to Pinterest and checked out Coors Light. There is tons of great stuff featured here from clothing to recipes, merchandise, people making stuff out of Coors Light products or turning stuff INTO Coors Light products. The amount of things posted on here is endless. This is by far my favourite kind of fan page!

Bud Light vs Heineken on Instagram

Bud Light

·         Posts roughly twice per week.

·         Does not follow the 50/50 rule; however, some posts promote Bud Light more than others. On Instagram, Bud Light just posts pictures for awareness rather than promotion.

·        

·         Its most successful recent post (within the last 10 posts), was posted 6 weeks ago. The post was the launch of its promotional campaign “The Bud Light Party”. The picture consists of Seth Rogen and comedian Amy Shcumer on a podium holding a Bud Light bottle. The picture is in black and white except the bottle which has a radiant blue glow hinting their liberal idealisms. The reason this post was so successful was because of two main reasons:

o   The celebrities: Seth Rogen and Amy Shcumer.

o   The political party reference to the current political hype that is taking place in the US.

·         The picture received 2,000 likes.

Heineken

·         Heineken does not post avidly; its most recent post was 18 weeks ago.

·         Scrolling through Heineken’s Instagram, you can easily perceive their brand. Their previous ad campaign #headingoutwith gave a bohemian perception; enticing consumers to head out and experience new, strange situations and companions alongside their beer. After that campaign, their Instagram launched another campaign targeting a different psychographic; they posted drawings of characters that appeared on bottles. After 8 posts, they launched another campaign with their current slogan “open your world” and began posting content related to the sponsorship of the movie Spectre (James Bond).

·         Their page does not follow the 50/50 rule either. Heineken posts very little about their brand, instead, their posts focus is more about the message that they want to deliver to the viewer.

·        

·         Their most successful post was their most recent post of which is directly related to the latest James Bond movie. Given its large fan base, the relation to the movie attracted attraction to the post and as a result brought the post more likes than their other posts.

·         The picture received 1,135 likes.

Sleeman vs Stella Artois on Instagram

This social media platform that will be talked about in this discussion is different from others because it requires using effective images and videos more than creating written content like they did on Facebook and Twitter.

When looking at these two historic brands, both brands are still on the same boat and have the ability to post content but unfortunately they lack the capability to keep their content on a consistent basis by only posting content once or twice a week. The type of content that each brand posts is mostly promotional post about their beer products like Sleeman has done for the dark chocolate beer and introducing a bundle beer case that include all type of Sleeman beer. Sleeman also uses warm colours and good quality photos that attract multiple senses of the consumer and almost makes them feel thirsty for a beer…or is that just me? Stella on the other hand does pretty much uses similar strategies and produces the same type of content that incorporate a lot of good quality images but are mostly posted to promote a product or an event that Stella Artois is a part of or promoting one the their biggest promotional ideas which is the #BuyALadyADrink chalice. 

Stella Artois Instagram post for #BuyALadyADrink campaign.

Now, let’s talk about the description features each brand uses. Sleeman Brewery uses a couple of features which include posting links that go to their company website or if there are holding events they will post links to the event page on Facebook or event page on their website. Sleeman also uses certain keywords but still lack the effectiveness of incorporating good keywords. Some keywords include; “Notoriously Good Beer” and “Local Canadian Beer”. Stella Artois does almost the same type of work as Sleeman does but still get more traffic because of the brand image they’ve already established in the beer market. Some features that they use are links to other sites and using some keywords or hashtags like #BuyALadyADrink or #GiveBeautifully.

Stella Artois Christmas Holiday Gift Promotion.

Sleeman Gentlemens Expo Promotion

When quickly comparing at both of best Instagram posts that they’ve created to the public, you can see that Stella Artois receives a lot more activity then Sleeman because of their brand image and Sleeman being a local brand and only being known in Ontario and Stella Artois being known globally. In the images above you’ll see that the best post Stella Artois created was a post about their holiday promotions and celebrating their long history of the brand. This post received 2,763 likes and 143 comments while Sleemans post received 93 likes and 2 comments, which was a post about the gentlemen expo event that Sleeman was sponsoring. Overall I believe that both of these post were successful because not only were the able to get good results but looking at the post itself, you can see that the visual aid looks professional and informative for viewers to see and get glued into the created content.

Have your say and let us know who you think should win the best Instagram account! Cheers!

Should Alexander Keith's implement this marketing campaign??

Alexander Keith’s is one of the best beers I've ever personally tasted but there's one problem.  Social media wise they aren't very active.  They don’t have a huge following on Facebook & Twitter and don’t even have an Instagram page.  They need a marketing campaign to help bring their popularity up and help their social media pages circle the net.  Here's my idea!

The Idea

Keith’s should create a 2 part campaign.  The first part is for fans to choose between new flavours of beer.  They vote by clicking on the link that will be posted on Facebook & Twitter. Then when they vote for a flavour, the post is shared or tweeted on whichever social media page they chose to click with.  This will help reach out to a wider audience. The more shares/tweets a flavour gets, the better chance of winning. This campaign will run for 2 months. The prize is as follows: Whichever flavour is chosen, 5 people from that flavour who shared/tweeted the most will be randomly selected to win a coupon for a free 6 pack of the new Alexander Keith’s flavour at their local LCBO when it’s launched.  Now for the 2^nd part! Now that the flavour has been chosen, now is where the real fun begins. A campaign to create the new flavour Keith’s bottle design will run for 2 months until the end of July.  When a photo is submitted on the website, it will be posted on the newly designed Instagram account. They simply create a photo with the hashtags #AlexanderKeiths, #Canada & #Beer.  This will help the photos reach out to a wider audience to people who might be interested in the campaign.  Whichever photo receives the most likes by the end of 2 months will receive 10% of the beers profits during the remainder of the year(August-December).

The Audience

Beer lovers of course and people who want to try their hand at making some money for graphic design.

The Goal

I'm looking to create more traffic on Alexander Keith’s social media pages as well as their website.  The link to vote for the flavours and submit the design will direct them to the website.  Then it will be posted on the social media accounts.  We want people to share, tweet and like these photos so that their mutual friends see these posts and do the same thing.  I think this idea should be launched within a couple weeks so that the new flavour is launched by mid summer.  The summer time is when people get together and what better way to start the summer then with a new Alexander Keith’s flavour that you picked!

Let me know what you guys think of the new idea down below.  Would this be something you’d be interested in? If you have any campaign ideas that could help launch Alexander Keith’s into social media stardom we’d love to hear them!

Coors Light vs. Guinness on Youtube

Coors Light Canada posts a new video or commercial on Youtube 1-4 times per month. Sometimes it is a similar commercial or video to another one featured in French.

Guinness has posted many videos in the last couple of months, a bunch on the same day. Roughly 6 per week sometimes more.

Coors Light posts commercials about their beer as well as their events. The videos are loud and exciting and fun!

Guinness posts videos about their beer, not so much about events they hold.

One series they posted is called Guinness Brewing Insights. In these videos there are different people who work for Guinness talking about their beer, ingredients, quality and history. Although the commercials are well done, they are much more informative and less entertaining than some other beer brand's videos. 

It is evident that the two brands are targeting different demographics when looking at their video styles. 

The description area on Youtube for Coors Light can go one of two ways: 

Either it has virtually no information or one sentence about what’s in the video, 

or it has links to all of its social media pages and the Coors Light official website as well as a short description of the video. They also utilize keywords and hashtags such as #mysterymansion in their description.

The description section for Guinness can be a summary of the information they discuss in the video, or an actual part of the script from the video. They use keywords such a St. Jame’s Gate, lager, beer, Made of More.

Coors light had 365,113 views, 89 likes and 30 comments on this video about what actually goes on inside the Coors Light Mystery Mansion.

I believe this video was so successful because, as the name suggests, it unveils the big secret of what goes on behind the doors of the Mystery Mansion. It’s a great video that shows how fun and awesome winning this experience would be and builds the hype for this contest that runs annually.

Guinness’s most watched video was the Guinness Nitro IPA“The Widget” video which had 804,143 and rightfully so. This video shows the science behind this brand and how they put a ping pong ball with a hole in it, filled with liquid nitrogen, inside each can and the describes the effects of that on each beer. It is really interesting and super high tech. It is surprising that it only has 56 likes, because who doesn’t think that’s awesome? 12 comments were made about this video. 

Bud Light vs Heineken on Twitter (2)

Bud Light vs Heineken on Twitter

Bud Light

·         Bud Light tweets about twice per day.

·         They do not use the 50/50 rule.

·         Their content consists of .gifs, pictures, and fun videos casting their promotion campaign actors Seth Rogen and the other members of the “Bud Light Party” (their current promotion campaign).

·         Their most successful tweet was the following:

·        

·         In this tweet, they posted a video comparing the “Bud Light Party”, a made up political party that essentially stands for everything that the Bud Light brand stands for. Within the video they talk about how America is a home to many different races and cultures. Through this video, Bud Light is delivering that message through a comedic approach, trying to engage all cultures to enjoy their product. Aside from the positive message, another contributing factor to this tweet’s success is the quality of the video; it incorporates cinematic shots, bright colours and three well-known actors. The result of all of these factors is a well-made video that targets their chosen demographics well.

·         The tweet received 62 retweets and 369 likes.

Heineken

·         Heineken’s Twitter page has a lot more content than its Facebook page. Within its page it has many videos, pictures and tweets. They tweet intensively, tweeting almost every 3 hours.

·         Their tweets follow the 50/50 rule; they have a wide range of content topics, ranging from sport highlights, viral videos, tweets regarding pubs and Heineken’s “interests”.

·         Out of the last 25 tweets, the most successful one was the following:

The tweet received 85 retweets and 98 likes. The reason for its success was because of its integration with the Soccer Tournament in Europe. Heineken has positioned itself as an international brand with an interest in soccer. Heineken often sponsors sport events, predominantly soccer. As a result, Heineken has a strong soccer fan community following them on Twitter and therefore this soccer related tweet has been a success.