Case Study: Labatt Brewing Co. Reels in With Free Calls
(Originally published in Marketing News, American Marketing Association's magazine)
LENGTH: 1123 words
Net brews up affinity for Labatt
By CATHERINE ARNOLD, Staff Writer
Most drinking consumers would welcome calls for free beer, but for 16 months in 2002 and '03, Ontario beer lovers got free calls.
The special promotion, using Internet-based technology to make free long-distance calls -- in exchange for listening to a targeted message before placing the call -- paid off for Toronto-based Labatt Brewing Company Ltd. in greater awareness and affinity for the brand, says Harvey Carroll, the company's director of import and domestic specialty brands.
Although initially intended as a summer 2002 promotion, the response was such that Labatt extended it, ultimately until last October. By then, nearly 300,000 college students and other customers had dialed more than 50 million calls. Considering that each of those callers heard messages tailored to their age and interests, that's a lot of targeted marketing that Labatt and its technology partners achieved, Carroll points out.
"The word of mouth continued to spread (and) by the end of the summer we were getting thousands of people signing up every week," Carroll says. "What made us want to keep going was the ongoing increase in people signing up."
Labatt executives liked the campaign idea in the first place because it was so buzzworthy.
"We thought, being the largest beer brand in the country, it was a good opportunity to be innovative, do something big and different. It also coincided with our market area of good times, enjoying yourself and being social," Carroll notes.
The brewer was approached in spring 2002 by Toronto-based online telephone company Onlinetel Corp., which offered the use of its Voice over IP (VOiP) technology, Carroll says. VOiP technology allows calls to be made over Internet-based networks. (One of the better-known companies offering this type of calling is Edison, N.J.-based Vonage Holdings Corp.).
Callers who wanted to make calls for free simply went to Labatt's "Blueline" Web site or called an automated phone number to register. There, they answered a series of questions and registered the home, cell or business phone from which they intended to call. Users would then dial a common access phone number, which would recognize the registered phone number, play a brief targeted message, and allow them to punch in the number they were trying to reach, Carroll explains.
In the course of registering, users provided age, local calling area, favorite activities (hockey, fishing and so forth), number of beers they drank per week, and their favorite and second-favorite beer, Carroll notes.
Almost everyone -- 95% -- signed up online with their information. Both the online and automated telephone registration systems only took information from users who indicated they were at least 19 years old, the legal drinking age in Canada.
With the information provided, Labatt queued targeted messages for callers of specific ages with particular interests. Altogether, there were 24 targeted clusters, each containing about 50, 5- to 15-second messages in a series, Carroll says.
For instance, if a 24-year-old music fan called in, the system might play a message highlighting a Labatt-sponsored summer blues concert. A 55-year-old hockey fan might hear a message concerning the NHL Go Cup Crazy program, also sponsored by Labatt. Either way, callers would hear a different message in a series on each call, and never the same message twice. "That way we could tell a story: We could tell message five, since they'd already heard the previous four," Carroll says.
The ability to create hundreds of messages and store them in .wav-format sound files for use -- as opposed to producing one or two messages for an average TV or radio advertising campaign -- was one of the pluses of the program, Carroll says: "We made a long laundry list of all the things we'd like to talk to consumers about, because there was such a great opportunity to say a lot."
The messages were designed to add value for callers. For instance, some chatted about the brewer's history, the proper temperature at which to serve its product or the best steps for pouring drafts. Some promoted responsible drinking, and not drinking and driving. Others offered fun facts, like how much beer is consumed in Canada per year. In some cases, the message was just a brief, "This call is brought to you by Labatt Blue" or "Hey, have a great weekend."
"The intent," Carroll says, "was to create a rapport."
Potential callers heard about the campaign in a number of ways. Labatt put inserts in cases of its beer, had a crew on university campuses and at summer events, ran advertising in movie theaters and included banner ads on its Web site. Word of mouth and PR, however, were main drivers, Carroll says; the campaign drew mentions in July 2002 in the Ottawa Citizen and The National Post, based near Toronto.
The company also received thank-you e-mails from users "in the high hundreds, if not the low thousands -- and that's people who went out of their way to write a thank-you," Carroll points out.
In October 2003, Labatt decided the promotion had lasted long enough. "We didn't intend to get into the telephone long-distance business. We're looking for the next big thing (in terms of promotions)," Carroll says.
While Labatt saw the program as a promotion, some marketers view it as a potentially ongoing CRM program. "It was a brilliant premise. The key is that they had a dialogue happening with customers who opted in, who went online and agreed to hear their message," notes Aldo Cundari, CEO of Toronto-based integrated marketing agency Cundari Integrated Advertising, who has handled such cross-industry campaigns before, including one for AT&T and the musical The Lion King. "I'd like to have seen them enhance that dialogue and keep it going."
Labatt declined to release actual costs, but Nigel Miller, director of public affairs, says running such a campaign would cost "less than doing a comprehensive advertising campaign."
On the other hand, Miller says, such a campaign was designed more to be a direct marketing initiative -- sending tailored messages to each caller. "It would cost more than some direct marketing campaigns and less than others. It was a significant undertaking, for sure. But it was pretty cost-effective by comparison to a mass marketing campaign."
And, although it's hard to link individual sales directly to the promotion, Labatt achieved the buzz and good feeling it had hoped for, Carroll says.
"For us, the first benefit was the opportunity to have a dialogue with the consumer, the chance to do something unexpected for consumers and creating goodwill by putting real dollars back into the pockets of the consumers," he says.
GRAPHIC: Picture, Labatt's portal page for the campaign.
LENGTH: 1123 words
Net brews up affinity for Labatt
By CATHERINE ARNOLD, Staff Writer
Most drinking consumers would welcome calls for free beer, but for 16 months in 2002 and '03, Ontario beer lovers got free calls.
The special promotion, using Internet-based technology to make free long-distance calls -- in exchange for listening to a targeted message before placing the call -- paid off for Toronto-based Labatt Brewing Company Ltd. in greater awareness and affinity for the brand, says Harvey Carroll, the company's director of import and domestic specialty brands.
Although initially intended as a summer 2002 promotion, the response was such that Labatt extended it, ultimately until last October. By then, nearly 300,000 college students and other customers had dialed more than 50 million calls. Considering that each of those callers heard messages tailored to their age and interests, that's a lot of targeted marketing that Labatt and its technology partners achieved, Carroll points out.
"The word of mouth continued to spread (and) by the end of the summer we were getting thousands of people signing up every week," Carroll says. "What made us want to keep going was the ongoing increase in people signing up."
Labatt executives liked the campaign idea in the first place because it was so buzzworthy.
"We thought, being the largest beer brand in the country, it was a good opportunity to be innovative, do something big and different. It also coincided with our market area of good times, enjoying yourself and being social," Carroll notes.
The brewer was approached in spring 2002 by Toronto-based online telephone company Onlinetel Corp., which offered the use of its Voice over IP (VOiP) technology, Carroll says. VOiP technology allows calls to be made over Internet-based networks. (One of the better-known companies offering this type of calling is Edison, N.J.-based Vonage Holdings Corp.).
Callers who wanted to make calls for free simply went to Labatt's "Blueline" Web site or called an automated phone number to register. There, they answered a series of questions and registered the home, cell or business phone from which they intended to call. Users would then dial a common access phone number, which would recognize the registered phone number, play a brief targeted message, and allow them to punch in the number they were trying to reach, Carroll explains.
In the course of registering, users provided age, local calling area, favorite activities (hockey, fishing and so forth), number of beers they drank per week, and their favorite and second-favorite beer, Carroll notes.
Almost everyone -- 95% -- signed up online with their information. Both the online and automated telephone registration systems only took information from users who indicated they were at least 19 years old, the legal drinking age in Canada.
With the information provided, Labatt queued targeted messages for callers of specific ages with particular interests. Altogether, there were 24 targeted clusters, each containing about 50, 5- to 15-second messages in a series, Carroll says.
For instance, if a 24-year-old music fan called in, the system might play a message highlighting a Labatt-sponsored summer blues concert. A 55-year-old hockey fan might hear a message concerning the NHL Go Cup Crazy program, also sponsored by Labatt. Either way, callers would hear a different message in a series on each call, and never the same message twice. "That way we could tell a story: We could tell message five, since they'd already heard the previous four," Carroll says.
The ability to create hundreds of messages and store them in .wav-format sound files for use -- as opposed to producing one or two messages for an average TV or radio advertising campaign -- was one of the pluses of the program, Carroll says: "We made a long laundry list of all the things we'd like to talk to consumers about, because there was such a great opportunity to say a lot."
The messages were designed to add value for callers. For instance, some chatted about the brewer's history, the proper temperature at which to serve its product or the best steps for pouring drafts. Some promoted responsible drinking, and not drinking and driving. Others offered fun facts, like how much beer is consumed in Canada per year. In some cases, the message was just a brief, "This call is brought to you by Labatt Blue" or "Hey, have a great weekend."
"The intent," Carroll says, "was to create a rapport."
Potential callers heard about the campaign in a number of ways. Labatt put inserts in cases of its beer, had a crew on university campuses and at summer events, ran advertising in movie theaters and included banner ads on its Web site. Word of mouth and PR, however, were main drivers, Carroll says; the campaign drew mentions in July 2002 in the Ottawa Citizen and The National Post, based near Toronto.
The company also received thank-you e-mails from users "in the high hundreds, if not the low thousands -- and that's people who went out of their way to write a thank-you," Carroll points out.
In October 2003, Labatt decided the promotion had lasted long enough. "We didn't intend to get into the telephone long-distance business. We're looking for the next big thing (in terms of promotions)," Carroll says.
While Labatt saw the program as a promotion, some marketers view it as a potentially ongoing CRM program. "It was a brilliant premise. The key is that they had a dialogue happening with customers who opted in, who went online and agreed to hear their message," notes Aldo Cundari, CEO of Toronto-based integrated marketing agency Cundari Integrated Advertising, who has handled such cross-industry campaigns before, including one for AT&T and the musical The Lion King. "I'd like to have seen them enhance that dialogue and keep it going."
Labatt declined to release actual costs, but Nigel Miller, director of public affairs, says running such a campaign would cost "less than doing a comprehensive advertising campaign."
On the other hand, Miller says, such a campaign was designed more to be a direct marketing initiative -- sending tailored messages to each caller. "It would cost more than some direct marketing campaigns and less than others. It was a significant undertaking, for sure. But it was pretty cost-effective by comparison to a mass marketing campaign."
And, although it's hard to link individual sales directly to the promotion, Labatt achieved the buzz and good feeling it had hoped for, Carroll says.
"For us, the first benefit was the opportunity to have a dialogue with the consumer, the chance to do something unexpected for consumers and creating goodwill by putting real dollars back into the pockets of the consumers," he says.
GRAPHIC: Picture, Labatt's portal page for the campaign.
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