You Don't Know Jack, About Variety Packs
Last month at Revolution Brewing, we unveiled a fresh promotion built around a new partnership with the international gaming company, Jackbox Games. Like us, Jackbox Games was founded in Chicago with their headquarters just a few miles from the brewery. They originally became famous for their quiz-based party game You Don’t Know Jack, and more recent hits like Quiplash, Fibbage, Drawful, and Trivia Murder Party. The hook for consumers is hopefully simple, purchase our Hero IPA Variety 12-Pack, get a free party game. Making the program happen behind the scenes and ensuring it benefits all parties however, is a little less simple.
Background
Last year, I had the pleasure of writing one of my favorite pieces, "The 12-Pack Variety Playbook," celebrating our IPA Variety Pack, League of Heroes. This mix pack was inspired by our expansive universe of IPAs, with each brand name featuring the word "Hero." In the post, I explored the various elements that contribute to creating a top-selling Variety Pack, as the League bravely tackled every challenge imaginable. After 20 unique rotations from 2017 to 2023—what we affectionately referred to as “issues” to embrace our comic book theme—it was time for a refresh.
After an incredible run, sales of the League of Heroes began to decline in the post-pandemic landscape for two main reasons:
The quarterly rotation of themed 12-pack carton artwork and the continuous introduction of new printed cans resulted in fixed costs—such as artwork, setup, and plate fees—that forced us to raise our target price to consumer (PTC) beyond the psychological threshold of $19.99. This adjustment was necessary to manage rising input costs during the early days of the pandemic. For the first couple of years, we could absorb some of these costs, partially passing them on to consumers through higher prices. However, as the world returned to normal, consumer spending habits and drinking occasions shifted.
New, lesser-known Hero IPAs struggled to connect with drinkers, while established, well-crafted options thrived. The initial excitement for trying the “latest and greatest” began to wane.
To address this, we needed to ✔️ reduce costs, ✔️ enhance consumer trust, and ✔️ lower the price so customers could more easily purchase the pack for under $20. The solution? We shifted away from a rotating variety pack to focus on our four best-known IPAs that span the style spectrum and speak for themselves: Anti-Hero, Hazy-Hero, Infinity-Hero (Hybrid/Juicy), and West Coast-Hero. Where we once prioritized novelty, we now emphasize consistency and quality.
Nearly a year into the revamped Hero Variety Pack, we’ve seen losses stabilize, and now we’re eager to drive growth once again. How do we give it that extra push? Enter Jackbox Games.
Origin Story
In late 2023, I was in my front yard when my neighbor Andy came outside. We had chatted numerous times since he moved in next door, but we had never delved deeply into work-related topics. Knowing I handled Marketing for Revolution, he brought up C2E2 (Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo), one of our biggest annual beer sponsorships and activations, dating back to 2013. He shared his role VP of Business Development and International Games at Jackbox Games, which also has a significant presence at C2E2, and suggested we consider collaborating. We promptly arranged a meeting at my dining room table.
During our discussion, we learned more about each other’s goals and upcoming plans, and the ideas began to flow. Although I had never partnered with a gaming company like Jackbox before, my experience working with a diverse range of cross-industry partners taught me that the best collaborations often start by dipping your toes in the water. By starting with a small wins or two and building rapport, you create the confidence needed for more ambitious projects later on. Together, we devised a progressive approach to kick off our partnership:
Game Night Addition - After launching our Sparkling Hop Water in the Fall of 2023, we wanted to have some programming at our Taproom for the upcoming “Dry” January, choosing a Game Night theme that encouraged drinkers and those abstaining a like. The wheels were in motion before speaking with Andy, but adding Jackbox Games as a feature of the event elevated the quality and turned it into a low pressure way for both sides to come together. ✅
Comedy Show - Next would be conceiving a special event together from scratch that would combine our strengths. With many of Jackbox’s writing team being comedians, we decided to do an in person show at our Brewpub with their team. It was a big success and we got to build the event together. ✅
C2E2 - At C2E2, we have the biggest activation space in the entire convention where 85,000+ attendees pass through to sit down, take a break, and often enjoy a beer. The area includes a big stage where we host panel discussions, drink-and-draws, and more. This year, we were able to share the stage with Jackbox to run interactive gaming sessions with the crowd and give away Revolution prizes. ✅
The Final Boss (Retail Promotion) - One of Andy’s first questions was a great one, how do they get their own custom beer some day? I explained that this is something we’ve certainly done before and while we could absolutely go that route, with the overcrowded shelves of 2024, most new and unproven concepts are destined to be small without the entirety of your marketing muscle and budgets behind it. The best opportunity to hit the full distribution reach of Revolution Brewing, and do it quickly, was to join up with an existing brand and create promotional packaging. With Jackbox being designed for parties, the Hero IPA pack was a perfect fit, with hosting a gathering being a common occasion for purchasing a variety pack. 🔲
Choose Your Hero is a campaign and call-to-action that we started in 2023 to bring all of our IPAs together under one message. The Jackbox promotion gave us an exciting way to bring it back stronger in 2024 and promote the new variety pack in Q4 during prime gaming and party season. In turn, Jackbox gets a lot of new customers sampling their digital party games for the first time, who hopefully go on to purchase more titles from their extensive library.
How’s It Work? There’s a lot of existing rebate programs out there where shoppers photograph their receipt and upload it to a site, it gets verified using AI, then they are Venmoed their rebate instantly. Knowing that, we asked our sweepstakes company Round is Now if we could do something similar. Instead of a Venmo rebate, they would receive a unique download code for one of five Jackbox Games. Sure enough, they could do exactly that and now that we’ve launched, the redemptions are handled automatically for us.
Media - Last year we partnered with Pot Luck Creative on some commercial spots that were run on Hulu Ad Manager, which I highly recommend for impact and value. We were able to combine our 4 commercials into 1 new version this year that celebrates a common variety pack use case. This will run on Hulu in the markets we choose, to the age ranges we prefer, on the shows of the genres that we feel are a great fit.
“Influencer” Partnership - A few years ago we started hosting a Dungeons & Dragons group at our Taproom monthly and began drawing great crowds from it. Around the same time a creative gentleman named Jake Pauwels started a TikTok channel from his home in Michigan, with a series called Roll for Sandwich. Each day he lets the dice decide the fate of his lunch each day. He’s amassed over 2.3M followers and gets incredible engagement on his videos, even years after launching the channel.
These two sources of inspiration led to a recurring TikTok segment our own pages called Roll for Beer. In each episode, a different employee would roll a D20 to determine their shift beer, the glass, and garnish to go along with it. They would do a voiceover and talk about their role at the company. Friendly exchanges from our relatable series led to us hosting Jake and fans of his channel at our Taproom for a Chicago meetup. Again, start small, but the turnout was quite large.
This year, we worked with Jake to include our Choose Your Hero / Variety Pack / Jackbox Promotion by having him integrate it into a weeks worth of his videos where he would roll for a different beer after build his sandwich (1, 2, 3). The three videos combined for over 2.8M views, 394K Likes, 3,610 Comments, and over 10,000 saves/favorites on TikTok alone, helping us gain awareness for both the pack and the promotion.
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Why We Do All This
While most of this maybe be obvious, here’s the full gambit of why we’d want to invest behind such a program
Relationships - Partnering with such a well-known, respected gaming company who is also local to Chicago and a co-sponsor of C2E2, by achieving both of our goals creatively, opens the door to so many cool ways to help each other in the future.
Display Space - By offering retailers a cool program that awards their customers with something extra, with eye-catching displays, they’re often willing to provide incremental space to make it pop 💥
Widen The Tent - The promotion expands the range of who might pick up our IPA Variety Pack, encourages first time buyers, and hopefully turns them into repeat buyers.
Rate of Sale - The combo of display space and a free game will naturally increase the rate of purchase, which helps us, our distributors, the retailers featuring it, Jackbox Games, and the shopper. Quintuple win.
Repeat Buys - While the code given is random, there’s 5 different games that can be unlocked allowing fans of the pack to buy a second pack and have decent odds of getting a different game.
It’s Fun - This program came with a lot of unknowns. One of the best parts of being an independent company is the lack of red tape that stands between you and doing something that just feels right.
Points of Pride
While it’s too soon to call this program a success having just gotten underway, I can state with certainty that I’m proud of what we’ve put together. It took some outside the box (ope!) thinking to come up with a hook that feels unique for the industry, yet manageable for a brewery of our size. Unlike most sweepstakes, everyone wins, and it all happens digitally.
Rather than jumping right into something this complex, we showed patience and developed a rapport with Jackbox Games by mapping out a few easier wins, then stepping up the degree of difficulty over time. The beauty of cross-industry partnerships is that you get to collaborate with people who work and think differently than you. Go in with an open-mind, willingness to adapt, prepared to compromise and you’ll come out a heck of a lot smarter than when you started.
