MillerCoors, the second largest brewing company in the US, who is most well known for their American-style lagers Miller Lite and Coors Light are taking a new approach to reach their consumers in Colorado. This week under their A.C. Golden Brewing Co. unit, MillerCoors plans to launch their new craft-style beer, Colorado Native Lager. According to Jeremy Mullman’s AdAge article, “Miller Lets New Craft Brew Speak for Itself”, the new lager, which is brewed from “99.9%” Colorado grown ingredients and distributed only in Colorado, will be marketed exclusively through digital and word-of-mouth channels.
This in itself is not an entirely new concept for the Chicago based company. The Colorado Native Lager is following in the footsteps of Blue Moon, another MillerCoors’ craft-style beer whose popularity was built through word-of-mouth advertising. According Mullman’s article, A.C. Golden will be putting the entirety of the Colorado Native budget into mobile and social media channels hoping to encourage consumers to become the brands advocate and introduce the beer to friends.
Where the new approach differs and becomes more engaging is with the addition of SpyderLinks’ SnapTag technology, which will enable MillerCoors to utilize their logo on each bottle as a portal to mobile interactivity. According to Mullman:
“Every Colorado Native label is affixed with a "SnapTag," which, if photographed on a mobile device and e-mailed to a specified phone number, allows the brand to begin a conversation with its drinkers. After e-mailing in a picture of the logo, a drinker will first get a reply asking for their birthday. If they say they're older than 21, they'll be queried with Colorado-centric trivia about their hobbies and interests, and the database will remember the answers and use them to craft future communications and offers to each individual drinker.”
Through utilizing the SnapTag technology MillerCoors will be able to communicate with their consumers rather than just talking at them with the goal of organically growing the brand around what the Colorado consumers want. This will allow A.C. Golden to provide consumers with content and information that is relevant to their lives with the hope of building the number of advocates for their brand. According to A.C. Golden’s president, Glenn Knippenberg:
“This brand is all about our consumers and their Colorado lifestyle. And this technology is going to allow the brand to evolve based on what they tell us about their lifestyle.”
As a craft beer fan myself I wonder if this approach will resonate within a community that tends to be skeptical of any beer brewed by a national powerhouse. It would also be interesting to see how many people will be willing to install the tag app and go through the motions of sending their personally identifiable information to MillerCoors. Will the incentives be enough to entice their customers to jump through the barriers to entry? Using digital and mobile advertising to build brand advocates will definitely be a huge step for brewers who have typically shied away from social media outlets in the past because of the struggle with age verification. Finding that “killer implementation” could be the answer for Colorado Native Lager success in a market that is already over-saturated with locally craft brewed beer.
