Buzzards Bay Brewery and YellowPepper are finding that text messages might be the perfect way to reel in consumers.
Among friends, text messages via mobile phones might be a convenient way to stay in touch, but for brands they are an invaluable way to initiate a relationship with consumers. Buzzards Bay Brewery has seen promising results since November 2002 when it started reaching out to new consumers through an ongoing campaign using text messaging.
Buzzards Bay Brewery Text Messages Consumers for the First Time
Producing 6,000 barrels or about 84,000 cases a year of craft beer (all-malt or nearly all-malt beer made by America's small, regional, micro- or pub-breweries), Buzzards Bay Brewery competes in a niche market where only two out of 100 beer drinkers choose to drink craft beer. Despite the small numbers, the brewery has optimistic plans to grow 25 to 35 percent per year over the next six years. However, a key element to do so is to distinguish itself from other breweries so as to maintain customers and attract new ones.
“Craft brew drinkers are historically very fickle and go from one brand to the next,” says Van Potts, marketing manager for Buzzards Bay Brewery. “What we’re trying to do is develop some brand loyalty. You have to develop relationships with customers to keep them interested and thinking about your beer.”
Trying every traditional form of advertising from billboards to television to radio since its opening in July 1998, the company eventually turned to text messaging, an application currently available on approximately 110 million mobile phones in the United States.
Working with YellowPepper Inc. an agency that helps marketers create, manage and deploy wireless content, the brewery created a text message fishing game, with its main objectives being to develop a direct one-on-one relationship with its consumers and further brand its name.
“For a brewery our size, or any business that’s our size competing in a niche business in a very large market, it’s tough economically to have a direct conversation or relationship with your customer via traditional mass market such as advertising, television or radio,” says Potts. “[Wireless text messaging] affords us the ability to have that relationship with our consumers directly. That’s the brilliance of the whole thing.”
How the Game Works
Subscribers of Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Cingular and T-Mobile cast their rods by sending out the word, “fish”, through a text message on their mobile phones. A text message will be returned with information about the type of fish and number of pounds caught. Participants fish as many times as they wish with one single objective: to catch the most pounds of fish by the end of each month. Each month’s winner is then rewarded not with fish but with a year’s supply of beer. To keep track of the competition, participants can visit the brewery’s Website to see the current highest scorers of the game.
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Though the text message only includes information about the weight and type of fish caught, the sender of the text message appears as: fishing@buzzardsbrew.com, allowing for additional branding throughout the game.
To mix things up a bit and motivate players to keep on playing, YellowPepper constantly adds new elements to the game. Weather conditions can prevent fishers from going fishing on a given day. Likewise, situational components such as running out of gas or food may occur at a moment’s notice, sending fishers back to the harbor. These situations are relayed to participants via a text message after they cast their rods.
“We’re constantly trying to tune the game up to get people to come back on a more regular basis as opposed to saving up all their fishing days for the last five days of the month,” Potts says. “Obviously if we can get people to play for the whole 30 days of April, then that’s more exposure for us and more [participants] doing things.”
What the Future Holds
Text messaging is a great wireless application that is perfect for starting a wireless relationship with consumers. In addition, as new technology becomes available, the application can always be expanded upon, says Marc Theermann, CEO of YellowPepper.
More than six months into the game, the agency and brewery are working together to see how they can elaborate on the game and introduce new marketing ideas using the relationships they are currently working to establish through text messaging.
Upcoming developments include picture enabling the game, allowing participants to see fish animations on their mobile phones each time they catch a fish. More sophisticated possibilities include the sending of text messages and e-mails depending on the actual location of the user. Consumers who wish to opt-in to this type of service will be informed of events such as parties and promotions according to their locations.
“I believe, in the future, we can change and shape consumers of Buzzards Bay with a two- to three-hour notice,” Potts says.
Theermann says that by the end of the year, there will be two additions to the game that will expand the offerings, make it more interactive and include some cutting-edge functionalities such as picture messaging and possibly streaming.
The Results Speak for Themselves
No matter how creative or unique a campaign is, it is the results that always get the most attention. Measuring the number of people playing, the number of return players and the number of times each player plays, YellowPepper used these factors to determine the Buzzards Bay fishing game’s success.
The results haven’t been disappointing. Theermann says the average user plays about 50 times, and the February winner played 2,500 times. Meanwhile, Potts says the month of April was the best month the brewery has ever had. This is noteworthy, especially considering that beer is a seasonal product and the best months usually come in July and August in the New England area, according to Potts. Though the campaign may not be the sole reason for the brewery’s success, Potts says the campaign was definitely a factor.
In addition, YellowPepper received the top honor in the 2003 Summit Creative Awards competition for the Buzzards Bay campaign. The competition takes place annually and included 3,000 entries from 17 countries.
Text Messaging Attracts Attention
Meanwhile, the numbers indicate that text messaging, in general, is taking off among users. AT&T reported a 300% increase in text messaging since interoperability was established last year and the adoption rate for consumers has increased from 25% to nearly 50%, resulting in approximately one billion text messages being sent per month, according to Theermann. As text messaging gains popularity among users, Theermann has seen increasing interest from brands to incorporate wireless into their marketing campaigns.
“The last four months have been great for YellowPepper,” he says. “We’ve seen a lot of attraction and pull from the industry and a lot of people want to talk to us about wireless marketing.”
Currently, Theermann says that text messaging is a mass medium as short message service (SMS) is available on approximately 110 million mobile phones. However, campaigns using multimedia messaging (MMS) will not reach the masses as not enough people own mobile phones capable of MMS and equipped with platforms such as Java. Theermann predicts that this will change in the near future, though.
“Wireless is not going away, and the medium will evolve very strong in the next couple of months,” Theermann says. “Buzzard Bay will be at the forefront of being able to communicate with these people because they have started their relationship.”
By combining an appealing offer with a popular activity – text messaging – Buzzards Bay Brewery and YellowPepper have people fishing in a new way using their mobile phones. As the application becomes more popular and widely used, the brewery might just come to find that this is just the beginning of a beautiful relationship with its customers.