Okanagan Spring Brewery is hoping a “three thumbs up” marketing strategy will help sell its new, limited edition pack of flavoured beer this summer.
The Vernon-B.C.-based brewery has launched the Hefeweizen Pack, which includes 12 bottles of three new beer types: Okanagan Spring Sonder Hefe, an unfiltered wheat beer with what it calls “subtle banana-clove flavours,” as well as ginger and lime flavours called Okanagan Spring Ginger Hefe and Okanagan Spring Lime Hefe.
“Hefe” means wheat in German and “weizen” means yeast, according to the German Beer Institute.
“With everything that’s happening in the craft beer revolution … we wanted to have a big bang for the summer,” says Mitra Shad, national brand manager for Okanagan Spring Brewery. “We really wanted to do something to disrupt the market at retail and step out of our own comfort zone.”
That includes the slightly wacky campaign that features a three-handed man. The idea, developed by its Toronto-based creative agency Open, was that the variety pack was so enticing that consumers will wish they had three hands to hold each of the different flavours.
Shad says the team wanted the campaign to be more product driven, and less about the Okanagan Spring brand. “We wanted to do something that was impactful that stood out both in retail and in media,” Shad says. “This was the one that was the most unorthodox and stood out the most.”
Open co-founder Martin Beauvais says the three-handed guy came from the idea that it’s difficult to pick one flavour over another. “Who best to be a spokesperson than someone who can hold the three beers at once?” says Beauvais. That was then underscored by the “three-thumbs up” campaign slogan.
“It was a fun campaign to develop, elements like our three-handed cursor that appears when users roll over one of our Hefeweizen Pack banners, really highlight the versatility of this idea,” says Beauvais
Open also came up with the colourful design on the bottles and box, and developed the beer names. Sonder was launched in April and is available across Canada. The other two new beers are only available in the Hefeweizen Pack, available in B.C. and Alberta this summer. The beer company wants to test the other flavours in and around its home market first, before potentially expanding them to other parts of the country.
Jungle Media was the media buyer, and chose to concentrate the campaign on transit shelters, mostly in Vancouver and Calgary, as well as ads on local radio and some social media, including Facebook and Instagram.
