Here’s a sneak peek at our April 9 issue.
Alberta brewery has been leveraging ‘viral’ vids for nearly 20 years
On the evening of June 4, a red carpet will be unrolled in front of the Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary for one of the kookiest awards ceremonies in Canada. Normally mild-mannered Calgary photographers will be snapping photos like Hollywood paparazzi, the media will be there, often dressed in costume, and as the attendees step out of their cars in front of the hall, they will all look as though they were slightly drunk when they got dressed. In fact, the whole mood of the event is of cheerful tipsiness, which is appropriate since this is the Big Rock Eddies, a celebration of two things that fit together hand in glove: beer and advertising.
You may not have heard of the Eddies, so click here for, uh, a taste. It’s one night of low-cost advertising awesomeness—surprising, memorable, and often naughty. It’s short films shot on low budgets with high impact.
At their most basic level, the Eddies are a contest in which Alberta’s Big Rock Brewery asks its customers to make print and television ads for the mid-sized brewer. First prize: $10,000.
Each June, Big Rock hosts a sudsy awards gala for which 1,500 people in ridiculous outfits buy tickets to view the work, vote on favourites and then see the winner crowned. The brewer then donates all proceeds from the awards night to the One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre, the Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter and various Alberta arts initiatives. No wonder the Canadian Marketing Association recognized the company as the best PR campaign in the consumer products category recently.
But the Eddies are so much more than that; for 19 years now the company has successfully been asking its customers to be its brand evangelists. That puts it a decade ahead of the infamous Doritos Super Bowl ads.
Given its size and limited marketing budget, Big Rock is a case study of how to expertly and authentically enable a brand’s champions to spread the word in their own way. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it was a case study a decade ago. Marketing trends have since caught up to and passed Big Rock by. The question is what must the company do now to catch up.
The Eddies were, as is so often the case, a communications invention borne of necessity. Back in 1993, less than a decade into the company’s existence, there was hardly any money for marketing, let alone advertising.
Big Rock’s founder Ed McNally, a guy known for his frugal entrepreneurialism, decided to ask Big Rock’s customers to get involved. “Who better to make ads for Big Rock than those who drink and love the beer,” he says. He also named the contest after himself.
(This year’s Eddies will be the last for McNally, however, who announced his retirement on Mar. 15. He is ceding the role to Robert Sartor, the former CEO of Calgary-based Forzani Group from 2003 until it was taken over by Canadian Tire last summer.)
Since this predated widespread adoption of high-speed internet, posters were put up on lampposts and coasters were placed in bars and some ads were submitted. No one remembers them; they live on a dusty VHS tape somewhere in the bowels of the brewery. Like so many first attempts, they were probably terrible.
The idea, however, was good and continued to grow. The party got so popular that it sold out in seven minutes one year. Aspiring ad producers moved to Toronto and evangelized about the awards. The Eddies became a gem of a marketing asset.
These days, Big Rock is a much larger company, but is still very much a craft brewer. It has less than 1% of market share in Canada, although that number could be as high as 3% in Alberta. Sales in 2010, the most recent full year for which the company has released results, were just over $45 million, putting it behind Ontario’s Brick Brewing in terms of size. Big Rock went through a period of geographic expansion in the 2000s and sells to nine provinces, but says it’s now trying to focus on its roots in Alberta and B.C.
There’s more! To read the full story, pick up the April 9 issue of Marketing. Or better yet, click here to subscribe today.
Want to enter the Eddies? Check out the website.
