From under the arches into tesco

“Take my money and set it on fire”

BrewDog is a brand built on attitude. ‘Punk’. Anti-corporate, anti-mainstream, and anti-advertising. In fact, after founding BrewDog, when asked about the potential of advertising, James Watt stated “I would rather take my money and set fire to it.”

So, the ‘advertising’ brief to drive mass awareness and trial of BrewDog, within mainstream beer drinkers, wasn’t a simple one. Especially as since BrewDog’s initial success, a whole host of copycat craft brewers were cluttering the market, bombarding both the on-and off-trade, and stealing share.

From low-hanging fruit to the mainstream

BrewDog scooped up craft beer enthusiasts easily. So, to maintain their rapid growth, the brand had to convert more mainstream beer drinkers. Our challenge was to wake up ‘sleepwalking lager drinkers’, who order a Stella, a Bud or a Fosters out of habit, and convert them to BrewDog.

It’s the product, stupid

BrewDog’s craft rise had been fuelled by provocative PR stunts. Think driving tanks down Camden High Street and throwing taxidermy cats out of helicopters.

But for mainstream growth, we needed to focus on the one true element that makes BrewDog different from mass-produced lagers. The product. The beer. And in this case, Punk IPA, BrewDog’s flagship beer.

From blind tastings, we knew that it’s hard to tell the four biggest selling UK lagers apart. Budweiser, Fosters, Stella Artois and Carling are all simple plain beers, with very little taste differentiation. In contrast, BrewDog Punk IPA is an explosion of flavour, with new-world hops bringing big hits of grapefruit, pineapple and lychee.

For us, it was all about the product.

So how to demonstrate this ‘off-the-scale’ taste point without falling into the ‘seen it before’ trap of ‘tastes better’ advertising?

Ratebeer

Ratebeer.com is a website for beer geeks, who drink beer and then go online and rate it. Every beer is rated out of 100.

Ratebeer.com scores Carling at 1/100, Fosters at 3/100, Stella at 9/100, and Budweiser at a remarkable 0/100. BrewDog Punk IPA scores at 97/100.

So, we thought that combining the ratebeer.com ratings of BrewDog’s big brand competitors with a play on their famous advertising lines (Think ‘Wassup’ and ‘Good Call’) would be highly provocative, get noticed, and prompt behaviour change.

It was risky. Not strictly legal. And most of our chosen press and OOH refused to run the creative at first. But it was well worth it.

Off the scale response

Everyone had an opinion on the RateBeer campaign. Some loved it. Some hated it. But as soon as it launched, everyone was talking about it. From endless social chat, to broadsheet papers, to Mark Ritson’s mini-MBA course, it became famous.

It also helped BrewDog drive huge awareness and trial with mainstream lager drinkers.

An independent YouGov brand tracking study showed brand awareness rose 7% during the campaign.

And when asked, 25% of loyal Stella drinkers (who said they were aware of BrewDog before the campaign but not tried it) said they would now buy Punk IPA. Followed by 21% of Carling’s, 19% of Budweiser’s and 19% of Foster’s.

Ultimately, we used the millions of pounds spent by the likes of Bud and Fosters on advertising, to eat into their market share.