We regularly receive press releases from brewers and PR companies. Some releases come direct from the brewers themselves while others from sophisticated PR firms, but the message is almost always the same: We have something new (usually beer) and we think what we have created is pretty cool. Would you like to share this news with your readers?
Sometimes beer companies send free beer (and a glut of coasters, glasses and other shwag) with a news release, which is appreciated. Occasionally the beer is great, but usually not so much. I still have a tall can of Great Western Original 16 (noticeably bad beer) sitting under my kitchen sink and despite my alcohol induced glass shattering habit, I still have three cupboards full of branded beer glasses.
The rules of the beer PR game are simple, yet many companies fail to get it right.
- Beer needs to taste good for people to care and talk about it. A PR campaign will fail if the product it is supporting is sub-standard. Make great beer, tell people about great beer.
- Just tell us about your company, your beer and what you are up to. Promotional campaigns succeed when the campaign is relevant to the beer. Schwag and gimmicky PR campaigns that have little to do with beer do not build awareness that sticks. This does not mean anyone should communicate in a matter of fact or boring manner, but it does mean the message and the product need to be aligned. Humour can be a great tool, but it has to relate to beer in some way shape or form.
- With enough money, rules one and two do not apply. Rule three is pretty much reserved for the big brewers (unlike Budweiser, craft brewers cannot and should not sponsor professional driving events such as NASCAR).
I say all of this because I want craft brewers to succeed. The world of beer marketing is dominated by a few giant corporations with deep pockets, balanced by thousands of small brewers, which also happen to be growing quickly. Too often craft beer PR fails, which in the end hurts the craft beer movement. Make delicious beer, talk about it and repeat.
Cheers,
Erik
I get annoyed when PR companies send me beer that is clearly outside the scope of my blog. Either they have a serious attention deficit, or they don’t actually care. As long as the party they are dealing with is even remotely connected to beer, out goes the product so as to make their numbers look good to the industrial brewing client. Waste of time.
What seems to be the latest scheme is stealth advertising in the form of droll content. Have you gotten e-mails offering you free content that would “be of interest to your readers”? Again, these pesky marketers haven’t bothered to assess the suitability of my blog. They just think because I write about beer, I’ll accept whatever junk they are churning out.
That said, it is refreshing to deal with a PR company that is professional and has take some care in actually assessing what channels will be effective for their client.
Cheers,
Rick.
Rick – Recently we have received a number of free content offers, and a few have even offered to pay for a one off guest post. The content has always been blatantly promotional and advertorial.
There is no easy way to build sustained awareness other than having a good product.
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