During the epic rise of craft beer, platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter gave a microphone to the people. An opportunity to not only comment and ask questions of their favorite brewery, but the ability to create their own channel of content. While most would participate casually for their own enjoyment and as a way to interact with other enthusiasts, others had bigger aspirations for their career, including myself and my pretend Twitter nemesis, Chris McClellan (@Brewenthusiast). In his latest hill to die on, Chris declared that sending beer samples to individuals creating beer content is a waste of money to which I say, “not so fast.”
DOUG’S INTRO: Who are “Influencers”?
Influential members of the beer community came come in many shapes, sizes, and mediums. The content can range from reviewing beers, commentary on the culture and trends, news reporting, business analysis, and much more. These voices range from leaders in the industry, to journalists covering it, to individuals independently creating their own schtick. The mechanisms include social media feeds, publications, blogs, vlogs, streams, and podcasts. As a beer content creator myself, I cringe if I’m ever referred to as an “influencer” but for simplicity, I’ll be referring to anyone doing any of the above as one.
CHRIS’ INTRO: Should breweries send them beer?
At first glance, spending an innocuous amount of money sending a 4 pack of beer to a known beer writer or influencer seems benign and beneficial. What's the harm right? It only costs the brewery $20 (including beer, shipping container, and shipping) and they might write something nice or feature it on Instagram or TikTok or Threads or Bluesky or...or.... It's a finger-in-the-air earned-media hail mary, but hey - low downside and high upside amirite!?! As a recovering influencer who received (literally) thousands of these packages, and as someone on the other side running marketing for a brewery, I can tell you firsthand how impactful they were on my writing, my posting, and my affinity for the brands that sent them.
CHRIS’ TAKE: “Admit it. It's a Hail Mary. Hail Mary's (almost) never work.”
Breweries that invest in marketing and PR in a meaningful, purposeful, consistent way will garner favorable coverage through the development of long-term relationships with writers, media companies, and influencers, but this is so rarely done that it's laughable. This is why the big breweries hire PR firms to do it on their behalf, and most of them don't do a good job of it either. I'm walking, talking evidence of this. I used to write for many different publications back in the day, and of the beer packages I received, I can actually count on one hand how many times they influenced my coverage/stories/posts.
If you work at a brewery, you know I'm right. The ratio of packages sent to coverage earned is, in fact, close to zero. There's a very good reason for this as well: The writers/influencers who receive this happy little beer package aren't compelled, in almost any way, to actually post anything or write anything, and without a good story angle, you're usually SOL. It can work, and sometimes it does, but without a compelling reason for the receiver, it rarely will.
DOUG’S COUNTERTAKE: “More like 3rd Down and 5”
Please listen to Chris’ advice about creating real relationships. This is why I refuse to hire an outside company to do our PR/outreach. I receive their communications as a blogger/content guy myself and they’re almost always lazy, short-sighted, transactional, and the exactly opposite of how I’d want my company perceived. Instead I find it rewarding, both personally and professionally, to network with the people dedicated to covering the industry.
When it comes to sending beer samples though, Chris’ examples sound dated, like they’re from the print magazine era. Admittedly, I’m sure plenty of breweries still try to feed that antiquated beast. With the majority of beer going local, beer reviews don’t scale any longer in print. A lot of the best writing today is about technical brewing, news, and industry analysis. Consumer attention has migrated to the place where beer writers have struggled to relate: Youtube, TikTok, and Reels. Instead there are thousands of talented creatives there putting in work and finding new audiences, but if you’re not paying attention, you’d never know they existed.
My strategy has always been to 1) identify fun people in our team’s own personal feeds who are consistently spending time to do something interesting relatable to our own goals, 2) tell them how much we legitimately appreciate what they do, 3) ask them if they’re interested in trying our latest, 4) ask NOTHING in return or exchange.
CHRIS’ TAKE: The Math Seems Like it Adds Up...Right?
If you work in marketing, you do the math on getting eyeballs on your comms. It's not complicated. Sponsorships, partnerships, and paid/earned media are all part of the channel strategy. A boosted, owned-media post on IG/Tik Tok will cost ___, and this influencer has ______ followers, and I'm going to be exposed to _____ percentage of their followers, and that would have cost me _____ if I just boosted my own post and paid for it, ergo - I send beer and hope for the best.
The issue with this logic is that you're (probably) not thinking about two things: The nature of that influencers followers and their actual location. Who are these people? What do they care about? If you're a brewery in Chicago, and they live in San Diego, and you have no plans to sell beer your Chicago beer in San Diego anytime soon, what sort of value are you getting out of that media sample? Exposure to an audience of people who will never buy your beer and rarely visit your establishment? Does that actually have long-term value for your brand? Maybe, but in an age of hyper-local consumption, that value is going down every day.
DOUG’s COUNTERTAKE: This is Art, not Science.
I don’t find any point in doing this math that Chris speaks about. Comparing the cost of boosting our own post to the cost of an individual’s recommendation feels like apples and oranges. If someone is being thoughtful or creative for the betterment of craft beer and easy/early access to our beer sparks a content idea for them, I’m happy to pay that $20 to route it to them.
I don’t need to build a formula to show it was worthwhile, nor do I even have an audience to share that deck slide with whose eyes wouldn’t gloss over. Instead, I just fundamentally believe that enough good comes out of this practice and passing on proving its worth to anyone provides more time for other important work. Perhaps one disconnect between Chris’ example is that we don’t send anything out blindly to old, outdated lists of contacts. We reach out individually and confirm interest from anyone when a beer we’re promoting seems in their wheelhouse.
CHRIS’ TAKE: “We love craft beer, but it's (still) super niche”
Influencers, in whatever form they come in, are generally good at communicating with the small-but-mighty group of us who care about grisette and alpha acids and mash rests. When you look at some of the most popular influencers, they've got tens of thousands of followers and they post pretty damn interesting things. I like them too. But for the 99% of people who buy craft beer on the regular, it's not remotely interesting or relevant, and these influencers naturally specialize in the unique content that garnered them the followers in the first place.
It's usually not "check out this new beer from this brewery". The influencers and their followers simply don't care as much as you'd like them too. The final point here - the primary way us marketers define success is through "attribution", which is simply understanding what actions on our part drove what behaviors on the consumers end. It's the old "How did you hear about us?" question I love to ask in taprooms. Defining attribution through earned/owned media and influencer stories is a foggy mess of metrics and surveys and nonsense, so even if it was effective, it's hard to prove it over the short-term.
DOUG’s COUNTETAKE: “Go outside the craft beer box”
Chris’ take sounds pretty spot on if we’re talking about writers covering the beer industry and trying to reach a more national scale. If I were them, I wouldn’t care about a local brewery’s new Double IPA either. However, what about all the people making unique, local content who primarily DO NOT focus on beer, BUT you discover are fans of beer. What if you’re located in say Charlotte, NC and instead of finding the people doing beer content every day in North Carolina, you instead started focusing on people making Charlotte-specific content? That could be humor, lifestyle, culture, entertainment, etc. Those people aren’t as inundated with beer press releases of similar products and being shown interest from their local brewery could be really exciting for them. I agree that only focusing on beer reviewers is going to keep the conversation within the craft beer boundaries, but going outside of it is where you can actually move the needle.
CHRIS’s Final Thoughts
Similar to all of our mighty debates, there are shades of gray and nuance abound. Sometimes influencer samples work. Sometimes it catches fire for any numbers of planned/unplanned reasons. Sometimes sometimes sometimes. If you're gonna send me a box of beer, I'd recommend you do the (years of) legwork to cultivate a relationship first, drive a specific message home, and make sure you know who I'm influencing in the first place.
DOUG’s FINAL THOUGHTS
I totally agree that influencer samples “sometimes” pay off, just like all batters in Major League Baseball sometimes get a hit. I don’t fault any brewery who doesn’t want to participate for any of the reasons Chris lays out, but I personally like to have an open line of communication, including samples, with the folks keeping beer in the conversation. Be weary of outsourcing this type of work though because the motivations have a tendency to shift toward putting that pretty deck slide together for you in the end, versus the benefits of the long term relationships that develop when you take on the work yourself.
Enjoy this post? Here’s the other two “Take, Countertake” posts with Chris and a little more about what he’s up to:
Chris McClellan is a beer industry veteran, Advanced Cicerone®, and Chief Beer Officer at Pubinno who's spent nearly two decades in the beer business in commercial strategy roles, including tenures at Magic Hat, Guinness, and Torch & Crown in Manhattan. He runs The Brew Enthusiast, his own brand strategy and digital consulting practice, an industry-leading ERP/CRM platform called Resin, as well as The Draught Shop, a draught education and quality platform that gives bars, restaurants, distributors, breweries, and consumers the resources, visibility, and accountability they need to pour the best draught beer in the world.
Hey Doug, thanks for the early-morning read very insightful. I agree with a lot of what you said as well as understand Chris’ perspective.
But I think a lot of people stick to the transactional short term KPI versus focusing more on building a community and affinity for the Brand aka Brewery.
Enlisting Local influencers to help get the word out can be a real benefit when you’re trying to fill up your tap room day in and day out. But blindly sending a four pack without a deeper connection will fall on death ears.
Outreach via social is crucial but it has to be the right kind in order to work.
I’ve worked in tv for most my career and when I’m coming up with ideas I reference the 85/15 rule.There’s 15 percent of the potential audience are die hards and will seek you out. But growth and sustainability is in reaching the 85 percent who is not in “beer world”. Example, vast majority of people who love NIKE are not Olympic athletes, just regular folks that enjoy looking stylish while “working out”.
Social is where Brand is being made and consumed. Influencers are part of that equation. I’m all about creating affinity for your Brand any way possible but building a strong responsive community first is crucial for any Brand’s survival in the long run.
But in the end, you can only build
Community only if your product delivers value to the consumer.
Ok. Enough jibber jabber. Have to go on my morning walk and start planning for my next beer run. Thanks again. Prost!
this was great!