Molson Brewing Company’s infamous failed social media campaign got me wondering: how do beer companies manage to encourage user-generated content on social media and are avoid being criticized for promoting irresponsible drinking at the same time? It sounds tough. Typical tactics to increase user engagement on social media may not work for beer companies like Molson. For example, UBC Bookstore is currently running a photo contest where users are encouraged to upload a photo of themselves posing with one of the products carried by UBC Bookstore. Implementing a similar campaign for Molson will be highly controversial, and will create numerous complaints as users are most likely to post outlandish (if not outrageous) picture of themselves being engaged in binge drinking to win the prize.
Then, are beer companies involved in social media marketing at all? Yes! Many beer brands are still active on social media, successfully forming a trusted community around their brands among users. Molson’s Cold Shot Campaign clearly exemplified what social media misuse can result in and taught many not to cross the line when using social media channels to promote their products.
An article “Which Beer Brand is the King of Facebook Marketing” by Kieran Wilson compares six different beer brands that vary in size and style, including, Budweiser, Coors Light, Miller Lite, Sam Adams, Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR), and Fullsteam Brewery to see how each brand is doing on Facebook. She also examined the number of posts and engagement level for 6 different beer brands (675 posts from the six brand s in total). The following graph summarizes the results.
*Please note that this data is only for the six brands, so it is not representative of the entire beer market.
Budweiser has the largest community by about 8 million fans. Budweiser is the biggest, followed by Coors Light and Miller Lite. But does a big community mean big engagement? According to our data the answer is no.
Pabst Blue Ribbon tops the list of all posts examined by yielding the highest engagement.
To be continued in Part 2 (I want you to READ, not be overwhelmed by a lengthy post!)