White Claw Hard Seltzer
THE
SUMMARY
At this point, everyone (who drinks) knows White Claw Hard Seltzer. However four years ago when it was launched, the spiked sparkling seltzer category didn’t really exist. The parent brand, Mark Anthony Brands, better known as Mike’s Hard Lemonade, had ideas of taking this category to the masses by providing a product that truly innovated and built a new category while rounding out its existing offerings. White Claw was created for health-conscious consumers and those with an active lifestyle who were looking for a flavored alternative to light beer. It was our job to bring this to market.
SERVICES PROVIDED
WHITE CLAW BROKE ALL THE LAWS OF BOOZE MARKETING TO WIN THE HARD SELTZER WAR - FAST COMPANY
OUR
APPROACH
Situational Analysis
At the time White Claw was the first of it’s kind in as a 5% ABV product and is primarily offered to grocery channels in 12-oz. skinny-can, 6-packs.
Key Issues
Prior to our work with White Claw, the spiked sparkling seltzer segment in the flavored malt beverage category had yet to be widely established. We needed broad consumer awareness through education while focusing specifically on White Claw brand attributes and benefits.
The
Solution
Two key points: First: Capitalize on fitness trends and the desire of health-conscious consumers to align them with brand attributes; create a gender-neutral product to define the category. Second: Attract brand awareness to White Claw using social media, digital channels, earned media, events, and retail outlet point of sale.
Creative: The voices of consumers in the health-conscious community were used to tell their individual, authentic stories on how they relate to this gender-neutral brand.
Website: We designed and built the site to educate consumers on the category in general while focusing on White Claw brand attributes using animations for all devices to keep users engaged. The site has then evolved to be much more comprehensive, accounting for new partnerships, activations, and overall evolution of the brand.
SEO/SEM: Three unique blogs were created to provide definition and relevance to the White Claw name and differentiate it from search engine clutter in the category. Each blog was tailored with SEO tactics to help with organic search rankings. They were supplemented with a search engine marketing “buy” which together drove traffic to the new White Claw site.
Retail: Point-of-sale messaging quickly communicated product attributes allowing important on-shelf and in-store placement versatility across multiple areas within the store: spirits, fresh ingredients, and health-food alternatives.
Social Media: Showcase product in simplistic settings to highlight attributes.
Additional Brand Work: We took into account how consumers were reacting to the initial brand have built in more strict guidelines around the usage of black and white imagery to help launch products and partnerships.
Hard seltzer movement here to stay.
– Global Data
Continuing
Work
RESULTS
With NO paid media support, the website saw over 15,000 unique visitors in the first three weeks of product launch with two minutes plus of site engagement and the lowest bounce rate in the Mike’s Hard Lemonade brand portfolio. The blogs and site held the top search engine results within the first three weeks of launch. And if you follow the industry, you know what White Claw has become.
EVOLVING WHITE CLAW
Since the successful launch, we continue to support White Claw. We have supported the launch of new flavors and products, defined brand strategy – mainly the use of black and white and its application to creative, among other brand initiatives that maintain Mark Anthony Brands as the leader in the hard seltzer category.
