Innis & Gunn Social Media.
I led the development of a new ‘always on’ social media strategy, to support brand recruitment by driving reach and engagement with a new and younger audience.
Born and based in Edinburgh, Innis & Gunn has grown since its inception in 2003 to be one of the UK’s most successful international craft brewers - No.2 craft beer in the UK, No.1 imported craft beer in Canada, No. 2 in Sweden. To support the brand strategy to recruit a younger audience (core drinkers were 45+), there was a need to increase brand awareness and improve brand engagement to stand out in a crowded craft beer market. I introduced a new ‘always on’ social media strategy to build the brand audience, developing a new approach to deliver genuine, crafted, and shareworthy content, and to build a personable and relatable tone of voice. Central to our strategy was a focus on engagement through quality content designed to entertain and engage.
Telling the brand story through its beers, bars, brewery, and people, we introduced a series of regular hub formats to support the content calendar.
For example:
Innis & Gunn Creates was a series that shared the inspiration behind new beers via Instagram Stories and short-form video to support product launches
Behind The Beers put a spotlight on the brilliant and dedicated people behind the scenes at Innis & Gunn, from brewers to graphic designers to sales, underlining the genuine passion for beer that goes into everything the brand does
Top Gunn’s was a weekly quick-fire round-up of our favourite consumer generated posts (which became a badge of honour for fans to be picked)
Shout Outs where we simply heroe’d other brands we loved and that shared our passion for quality, from guest beers in our taprooms to suppliers
#FarFlungGunn amplifying fan content by sharing where in the world they were enjoying Innis & Gunn beers
Spikes, or ‘hero’, pieces were bigger pieces of investment aligned to key brand priorities, such as activating an integrated campaign for I&G Lager, new product launches, supporting core brand positioning.
Some highlights:
Human Fruit Machine: as a nod to the fruity flavour in the new limited edition Mangoes on the Run IPA, we created the Human Fruit Machine, a Facebook Live gameshow where fans could play to win beer. This kick-started the launch of Mangoes on the Run with reach to100,000 people and over 6000 engagements.
#YourPint Campaign: recognising and rewarding fans was at the heart of this campaign, building a sound and relatable brand TOV. In one of these activations we heard that one of our drinkers, Marc, was running the Edinburgh Marathon and had given up drinking but couldn’t wait to have an Innis & Gunn Lager after. So we organised a surprise, well-earned, pint for him at the finish line, a story we told on our social channels by bringing fans in on the secret as we cheered Marc on throughout the race.
Kindred Sessions: Innis & Gunn collaborated with Tullamore D.E.W. Irish Whiskey to create limited edition beer Kindred Spirits, and Kindred Sessions (90k views) was created to support the launch, bringing together one of Scotland’s and one of Ireland’s finest musicians to cover a traditional Scottish folk song. Watch
Imagine & Gunn: taking a fan-centric storytelling approach to activate Imagine & Gunn, a competition for fans to create their own flavour of beer and brew it at the Innis & Gunn Brewery. I managed the campaigns, including content development reflecting the different stories of the winners from Canada and Sweden to launch the new beers in each market. Watch Koge’s Choice Sweden
Barrel-Ageing Re-launch: to support a complete re-brand and return to 100% barrel-ageing on core range beers, I produced a core brand film featuring founder Dougal Gunn Sharp explaining the unique barrel into beer process. Watch
Results after the first twelve months were positive, and achieved largely organically where budget was invested in quality and entertaining output.
I was also proud to see our work take Silver in the Digital Strategy category at the Marketing Society Scotland Awards 2018.