Word of Mouth Marketing

The Key to Brand Building in the Booze Business

If you’ve been following this blog (or read my book) you know that, with some exceptions, I’m not a big fan of paid or mass advertising to build brands. In my view, it’s all about point of sale communications, the role of the ‘gatekeeper’ (bar, server, or store people) and consumer conversations.

Call it face-to-face marketing

In fact, there’s a terrific book on the subject called The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace. It was written by a longtime friend of mine, Ed Keller and his partner, Brad Fay when they ran the Keller Fay Group. The company is now part of Engagement Labs and Ed Keller is the CEO.

Ed Keller CEO Engagement Labs

The Keller Fay Group’s mission was to provide market research and consulting services based on consumer conversations. In 2015, the company merged with Engagement Labs and now offers a “total social”​ measurement solutions that integrates offline conversation with social media analytics. They bill themselves as “the world’s first TotalSocial® company.” They track, measure, and advise brands on how to understand and apply the insights they gain from consumer conversations.

Here’s a short YouTube video that will explain more.

Word of mouth and alcohol marketing

I’ve long felt that in this marketing environment, the key to a successful brand can be described as follows:

Discovery→ DISCUSSION→ Discernment→ Dissemination

Actually, before talking about this with Ed Keller, I hadn’t paid as much attention to the discussion aspect, when, in fact, consumer conversations can predict sales and marketers need to understand the dynamics. As Ed put it in a recent article on LinkedIn,

“Every brand needs to learn its unique social architecture to realize its full potential, and measuring and modeling is the best way to identify the drivers that will have the most significant impact on sales and other KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).”

Speaking of drivers, Engagement Labs focuses on four key drivers to create a single brand performance score that combine online social media data and offline conversations into their TotalSocial®.

  1. Volume—How much conversation a brand is building both on and offline.
  2. Sentiment—The extent to which that conversation is positive.
  3. Brand Sharing—How much content is being shared.
  4. Influence—In what way are consumer influencers engaged with the brand

In applying this, Engagement Labs ranked leading alcohol brands and learned, as a whole, the alcohol category is made up of so-called whisper brands, which are performing below average both on and offline. When comparing online to offline, these brands perform slightly better offline, in face-to-face conversations.

According to Keller:

“The alcohol beverage industry as a whole is built around a culture of sharing and encourages its customers to engage with others in a social environment—which presents a clear opportunity for brands to engage with its fans and facilitate more meaningful conversations that result in improved sales and brand recognition.”

Think about the winning spirits brands over the years and the role of influencers and consumer conversations in contributing to their success. Brands like Tito’s, Fireball, Rumchata and others. In his Face-to-Face book, Keller tells the story of Blue Moon Beer, served in a branded glass and garnished with an orange, which is in the product ingredients. The question that followed (“Hey, what is that?”) grabbed attention and sparked conversations. And, by the way, rituals related to a brand have always played an important role in their consumer acceptance.

As I write this I’m reminded of Gaz (Gary) Regan’s story of a consumer “expert” and the pains he took to alert his colleagues to his “discoveries” of single malt whiskies. You’ll find the story here, but I’ll save you the trouble:

It seems that when he was bartending in the 1980s on South Street in NYC, a particular Scottish gentleman would come in for lunch every day, order a hamburger and ask for the “book.” It was a guide to single malt scotches and differences in brands, regions, water, grain and distillation styles. After work, the gentleman would meet with friends and colleagues and hold forth on the verities of various malts. While he sounded like an authority on the subject, the information he provided was less than 5 hours old.

Don’t laugh, it helped to build some brands, The Glenlivet included.

About Ed Keller

I have known and worked with Ed when I was in the market research and consulting business at Yankelovich, Roper, and we were partners in our own venture called ASK Associates—all back in the day. So, I can unequivocally say he is among the top marketing research and communications people I know. He’s been a pioneer in word of mouth; a member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Hall of Fame; a past president of the association; and, a prolific writer on the subject. The Engagement Labs company has recently won two awards from the industry.

Whether you’re working on launching a new brand or looking for increased traction for a current brand, you ought to look into the Engagement Labs and their work. In fact, go to their website and download their material.

Tell Ed I sent you.

“Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend,” Mark Zuckerberg once famously said. “A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.”  

          

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