Social Media Standouts: Untappd Awards, IPizzaA, and Year-Round Seasonals
Every brewery, big and small, is scouring for strategies to administer a much needed shot in the arm. That could through new ways of instilling a sense of pride from their loyal consumer base. Often, it’s a search for something incremental, whether in the form of new distribution or shelf space. Or it could be simply listening to customers, even if it results in something unconventional. Beer social media has been full of surprises lately, but here’s what stood out to me most recently.
Untappd Community Awards
In the late 2010s, you would go an entire year without ever hearing about RateBeer.com, a community website where among other things, users check-in, rate, and read reviews of beers from around the world. What was once the primary home for connecting with beer fans, didn’t have an answer for the post-Hazy IPA era of craft beer. One day each year though, there’d be a flurry of breweries posting on social media to celebrate the Rate Beer awards that they’d won, such as “Best Brewery in [Insert State]”. Just like an old Thrillist.com Top 10 List, brewers would despise these awards unless of course they received one, in which case they’d be on a flight to NorCal to accept in person.
I’m generally in favor of this widespread recognition for breweries, especially from a site who has the power to put actual data behind them, but the Rate Beer awards were cryptic in methodology and appeared to be extremely subjective. In 2017 it was reported that AB-Inbev, the largest brewer in the world, had quietly acquired a minority stake in RateBeer the year prior, then fully purchased the site in 2019. Independent brewers let out a collective groan, but the awards were eventually put on ice after 2020. This concept of user generated awards had a lot of potential, it just wasn’t being executed with any clarity or confidence from brewers.
Last week, Untappd brought the idea back with actual statistics behind the awards, giving consumers and brewers the ability to query the top rated beers of every style & sub-style, nationally OR by state. Not a fan of how Double IPAs and Pastry Stouts get all the love on Untappd? No problem. Go ahead and see how your Imperial Red Ale faired in your home state against all the others in this obscure style category: https://awards.untappd.com/
The press release led to a fury of social media posts from winning breweries proudly showing off their awards, which Untappd helped facilitate with a suite of graphic assets. Their website shared that “Over 1.5 million [unique] beers were rated in 2023, meaning fewer than 1.65% of beers (25,302 in total) won awards. Impressively, nearly 30% of brewers (7,427 total) produced an award winning beer!” To me, this is a win-win-win, here’s why:
🏆 Untappd - By putting in the development, design, and marketing effort to make these awards transparent and discoverable, Untappd wins by having brewers all around the world celebrating the app by proudly sharing the recognition its facilitating. Consumers get to see their ratings dictating awards, including on a localized level, instead of BJCP judges at competitions, and perhaps become more engaged on the app.
🏆 Brewers - Brewers have a new way of getting recognized that doesn’t involve the high costs of admission and shipping beer to competitions like GABF & World Beer Cup. The awards also don’t force them to focus on hype styles as the only way to be recognized via numeric score, since every style gets an award now. Lastly, they get to simultaneously compete on both the local and national stage.
🏆 Consumers - If these awards grow in prominence, it could lead to brewers to strategizing around them more. That could lead to more branching out and focus on underrepresented, less competitive styles to increase their odds of winning a future award. This is a very common strategy at the Great American Beer Festival, to target a less-entered category with a few entries compared to say American IPA, to increase one’s odds.
What Do You Want On Your Tombstone?
New Belgium’s Voodoo Ranger just announced a pizza-flavored IPA, co-branded with Tombstone Pizza. Why would a brewery want to collaborate with a frozen pizza brand? It’s all about incremental shelf space. For a brand as big as Voodoo Ranger, there may not be any shelf space left to ask for in the beer aisle, so the strategy shifts toward displays outside of it. In this case, you’ll likely see this IPizzaA stacked up into an island within the frozen section, or on the end cap outside of it.
Similar to the Untappd awards, collaborations like this are a win-win-win.
💀 Voodoo Ranger - This program will help the brand expand the footprint to multiple sections of the store, increasing the odds of impressing on consumers and selling more beer as a result.
🍕 Tombstone - By loaning out their IP for this collab, the odds of a consumer who picks up the Pizza-themed IPA also grabbing a Tombstone Pizza go up drastically. They also gain the opportunity to co-op (co-fund) a deal together, like buy 2 Voodoo Ranger 6-packs, get a free frozen pizza.
💳 The Retailer - Overall, consumers will end up with more groceries in their shopping car when there’s two semi-related products tied together. Retailers love to support these programs, especially when it involves two already fast-moving brands.
Now I’m not saying that everyone needs to go out and create a novelty, gimmick beer, but they do serve a purpose, can be a lot of fun, and aren’t limited to “the big guys”. These collaborations can happen on the most local of levels like our Garrett Popcorn beer, Half Acre’s Morton Salt beer, and Phase Three’s Affy Tapple beer which got great display space outside the beer aisle at the biggest retailer in the state, Jewel Osco.
Personally, I’ve been talking about Tombstone a lot as a result of this news and previously hadn’t thought about the brand since the days of this commercial:
Year Round Seasonal
As breweries look for new ways to zig, while others zag, the idea of year-round seasonals is one that I’ve seen a few times recently and find fascinating. In a previous Social Media Standouts post, I talked about Bells going year-round with their famous Oberon by releasing a slightly modified (in name and recipe) Winter version of their wheat beer. Just recently, my neighbors at Une Année decided to go year-round with their Märzen-style Oktoberfest.
I feel like this can work and the psychology behind it, depending on the time of year, is fascinating. When it’s September & October, nothing will resonate more than the general term “Oktoberfest”, so that’s what I’d want written loud and proud on the can in those months. Une Anne went with Märzen as the name in the off season and they know their consumers much better than I do. Personally, I love the idea of Munich-Style Lager like they have written in small letters on the can. I’d probably go bigger and emphasize that on the package more so for fear that Märzen is still too foreign to most. Maybe not to the extent of Czech-Style Lager, but Munich-Style Lager is intriguing, shows intent, and feels approachable. The risk of my strategy, and where Une Année could be correct, is that people who truly want an Oktoberfest year-round don’t make the connection.
Standing Out in a Crowd
True to the name of this recurring blog segment, all 3 of this week’s observations involve new ways of standing out in the crowd. Untappd successfully facilitated a viral wave of recognition for thousands of breweries, while supporting their own goals in the process. Voodoo Ranger worked their magic and created a new program to land incremental real estate in the frozen section. And my neighbors at Une Annee have a solution not only for their own customers, but fans of any brewery who wish Oktoberfest season didn’t have to end by November. The best new ideas begin by considering all your stakeholders and ensuring that they each stand to benefit. Instead of asking “What’s in it for me?”, trying asking “What’s in it for them?” a little more often. The rest of the pieces have a way of falling into place.