Berrios Win's 2020 IABC Golden Flame Award for Social Media
For the second year in a row, the Viking Alchemist Meadery and I have won a Golden Flame for Social media. This year, it was for a year-long effort to capture the digital market share around the theme “Best Mead in Georgia.” The basis for the claim is the meadery’s award winning label, Bliss, which has won Best Mead in Georgia for three years running. We took this opportunity to leverage key words, message consistency and paid ads to claim the territory, pushing out other meaderies in the state.
Below is the complete write up from the winning entry in IABC format.
Business Need and Communications Opportunity
The Viking Alchemist Meadery is a family owned/run meadery brewing mead in Georgia for over three years. Despite the rise of the craft beer industry, mead remains a misunderstood alcoholic beverage, mostly through a lack of awareness/education, though there is a deep human history. Without wider acceptance among a broader audience, it will not be possible to grow in sales and revenue.
Mead is brewed from just water, honey and yeast. Flavors can be added at any time during the process to create unique brews.
“Mead has been made—and perhaps even discovered independently—on every continent except Antarctica, and mead has been produced and drunk by just about every culture in the world,” writes author Chrissie Manion Zaerpoor in The Art of Mead Tasting & Food Pairing (Mead Maven Publishing). “No matter your ethnic background, most likely your ancestors made mead.”
Mead has a reputation, for those who have heard of it, as being a simple, one-flavor, ancient drink. The sort of thing you might find at a renaissance festival. Even within pop culture (Game of Thrones), there is no differentiation among mead. It’s just ‘mead.”
In Georgia, there are 5 established, significant meaderies, all vying for limited shelf space and customers. Last year, we saw an opening to gain more attention and capture the high ground, in our state. For three years running, the Viking Alchemist’s mead “Bliss” has won a statewide championship as the Best Mead. The decision was made to use this as leverage to seize leadership in the state as the “best mead.” As this is an annual competition, our window of opportunity was limited, and we moved as quickly as we could.
If the Viking Alchemist could control the conversation in Georgia around mead, we would also help sway market perception and opinion in a beneficial way for the category and the meadery, increasing overall sales and reaching more prospects.
Stakeholder Analysis
The mead audience aligns closest to the craft beer audience. From research done among distributors and tasting rooms, the wine audience doesn’t see mead as a preferred alternative, typically staying within the wine culture. Beer and cider audiences, however, have been receptive to trying mead and other beer alternatives.
What we know about our audience:
·Tap-room customers live within a 25-mile radius of the meadery.
Most other sales are at bottle shops, on a niche shelf.
Craft drinkers are 31.5% female and 68.5% male in 2019 (source: Nielsen Harris on Demand)
We are competing directly with craft breweries, but our ideal customer is s/he who is looking for something new and different. Tired of yet another IPA and receptive to a new experience.
Most newcomers are finding the meadery either on Facebook, Instagram, search or by referral.
Very few have had a significant experience with mead
Goals and Objectives
For this initiative, we chose to focus on one communication goal – Build a reputation as the Best Mead in Georgia.
To be successful, we would need to:
Increase our social media followers (July 2019: Facebook 3,030, Instagram 565).
Capture search terms on organic SEO.
Increase bottle sales (own more market).
As the meadery is a young brand, it was difficult to set hard goals. In general, a year-over-year increase of 20% across measurable metrics seemed appropriate. Our focus was on the label, Bliss.
Solution Overview
The meadery has three communication channels, in addition to the on-premise taproom: Facebook, Instagram and Website. Each has different uses and angles, but when used in concert we were able to present a very consistent message that the Viking Alchemist IS the best mead in Georgia.
Starting in November, we began communicating about the win, inserting it into dialogue, when appropriate. This meant using consistent language and steering the online conversation back to our key point, we are the best mead in Georgia.
In watching what other meaderies were doing, we quickly determined that pay-per-click (PPC) was not necessary. Competing meaderies were inconsistent and sporadic with no apparent strategy, reinforcing our suspicion that a sustained PPC campaign was not within their budgets. Removing this spend allowed us to redirect our sponsored buys narrowly, through Facebook and, occasionally, Instagram.
Implementation
We started with unified language: “For the third year running, our Bliss has been voted Best Mead in Georgia in the Georgia Trustees Wine & Spirits Challenge!” The key phrase “Best Mead in Georgia” became our recurring message. Simple, but ownable and credible. An additional message line was added later “Georgia’s own meadery” to combat another meadery’s message as “Georgia’s first meadery.”
An editorial rhythm was established that would be the backbone of our communication with ad hoc messaging around events, new releases or promotions. The structure provided an easy-to-follow pattern that allowed us to maintain consistency and frequency. Whenever Bliss was mentioned, it was accompanied with standard “The best mead in Georgia” language.
Monday – informative and education posts about mead
Tuesday – places you can find our mead around Georgia, co-branded with select bottle shops.
Wednesday – online sales and new releases
Thursday – visit the tap room
Friday – weekend focus around the tap room, releases and sales
Boosting Strategy:
Audience segmenting was done to focus on men and women, 23-50 YO, who were interested in beer/craft/wine/bars/organic and local food.
This audience was further segmented into two types of geographic audiences: Those within 15 miles of the meadery and those everywhere else.
Messaging focused on the tap room, events and growlers were used for audiences within 15 miles.
Messaging focused on bottle sales and online ordering targeted those further away.
Messaging that educated and informed audiences about the category was used for all audiences.
Since November 2019, we also posted a “Bliss, the best mead in Georgia” post, on average, once a month to all audiences
· Actively suggested starting with Bliss when asked what meads to try.
Similar activity to Facebook.
Targeted hashtags around craft beer, local food and natural ingredients.
Limited sponsored posts.
Website:
We added a callout with copy and photo to our homepage and updated our SEO listing.
We authored multiple articles about mead as a category, in order to gain more authority with Google’s search algorithm. Articles focused on mead education, our process and how mead integrates into lifestyle. Titles included:
How to explain mead to your friends
Are there health benefits to drinking mead?
Does mead age in the bottle?
Etc.
Published several press releases, through PR newswire and on the website, including one about winning the title “Best Mead in Georgia.”
Budget and Timing
Planning is a monthly activity, with each month planned ahead and larger promotions planned months in advance. All work was done in-house by the marketing manager in cooperation with a social media volunteer (AKA mead fan).
Monthly trade equivalent hours would be:
6 hours, photography
12 hours, planning and organization
2 hours, per week, writing, posting, commenting and reporting
In addition to labor, select posts were boosted on a regular basis at about $100 per month. This amount has increased since March, 2020, as there is a new tap room and distribution has increased. As of July 2020, sponsored budget is closer to $250 per month.
Challenges
Mead is veritably unknown. Of the thousands of bottles in a bottle shop, there may be only a few mead labels available. Typically, they are placed near the beer with little signage or presence. It is rare for a customer to choose mead unless they came looking for it. So, while distribution was decent, awareness was minimal.
Measurement and Evaluation
We set out to capture territory on Facebook, Instagram and Google.
Increase our social media following on Facebook:
Grew the fanbase from 3,030 to 4,200 (20% increase)
Increase our social media following on Instagram:
Grew followers from 565 to 1,300 (130% increase)
Capture search terms on organic SEO:
First position for:
Best mead in Georgia
Georgia’s best mead
Second position for:
Georgia mead (first position is held by georgiamead.com
Increase bottle sales:
More than doubled total sales, year-over-year
Bliss, specifically, showed a 400% increase in bottle sales, year-over-year