Millennials and Craft Beer in the Digital Age

It's hardly a secret that Millennials are a force to be reckoned with in modern American business. They make up an increasingly significant portion of the 25-45 age group business covets and targets. This is as true of the beer industry as any other.

The problem for business is the Millennial demographic is not receptive to traditional marketing strategies and tactics. You cannot effectively reach them via print, radio or television advertising. One might argue that's because they are fixated on computer, tablet and phone screens. But never mind.

There are a lot of things businesses have to keep in mind with Millennials and plenty of places to find that intel if that's your thing. Generally speaking, these kids identify more personally and emotionally with brands than prior generations. They demand to interact and be part of the brands they respect.

The platform that makes this stuff happen is provided by the combined emergence of the smart phone and social media, which allow good and bad experiences to be widely spread electronically in the blink of an eye. This kind of instant publicity was unheard of 10 years ago. Today it drives the success of many businesses...and Millennials are heavily immersed in it.

When it comes to beer, Millennial tastes are vague and transient. They want to experience a wide range of flavors, which means they are receptive to inventive approaches and bizarre blends, and somewhat bored by traditional styles. In short, they are regularly looking for something new and different.

That reality is forcing suppliers and retailers to radically increase the number of available choices. A reliable industry source expects the number of SKUs on the market to double within 10 years. That's a significant increase given there are already something like 10,000 SKUs out there.

These changes mean chaos for big beer, whose leadership is dominated mostly by folks who have been around for 20 or more years. Age alone isn't the issue. The more serious problem is they are stuck in an antiquated mindset. Expensive ad campaigns and traditional media are yesterday's news...they fall flat with Millennials.

Craft beer is another story. Small breweries and pubs never had the luxury of using expensive, traditional media. Building a brand identity took years. Then came social media and the smart phone. Today, craft-centric businesses are leveraging the digital space and effectively engaging with the all-important Millennial demographic. Craft brands are being built quickly, almost overnight in some cases.

In other words, the brand building shoe is now on the other foot. Being small and unable to afford expensive advertising tactics has put the little guys ahead of the big guys in the digital, Millennial age. If nothing else, you have to appreciate the irony.

Social Media and Beer Event Craziness

As alluded to previously in these pages (is that what they are?), I have been perplexed for quite some time about the speed at which the craft beer culture is moving. Last summer, there was some talk here and there about "event fatigue," a reference to the fact that it was difficult to keep up with the blitz of events.

I still think the pace of beer events peaks in the summer. But it's starting to stay crazy all the time. For instance, there were a bunch of events this past weekend: The Winter Nano Festival in Tigard, the Hillsdale Brewfest, Lompoc's Shrimp Boil and Chowder Challenge, Double Mountain Tap Takeover (NW Bottles) and the Beer Mixology Hat Trick at Guild Public House. It's quite possible I've missed an event or 10.

Related to this is the pace of new beer releases. It's quite insane. Virtually every brewery is pushing out new, experimental beers on regular basis. There was a time not so long ago when you walked into a brewpub and knew their standards and typical seasonals. That's less possible today, as the list of standards is often pared down, and the list of seasonal offerings has grown.

Why has this happened? Why do breweries, pubs and promoters feel the need to stuff the calendar with special events and new beer releases? The momentum of this trend has gone completely off the hook over the last couple of years. What's the deal?

The Shift to Digital Marketing
The answer has something to do with a monumental shift in the way marketing and advertising is done today. The trend toward more digital marketing was already underway when the economy crashed in late 2008. When the crash came, expenditures on all kinds of marketing tanked. It's not so surprising. People weren't buying anything. Why advertise?

When advertising/marketing budgets began to recover in 2010, the ground had shifted. The old way of doing things was changing. Look at the above graphic, which I did not create. A couple things to note:

1. TV advertising has been pretty stable and will evidently stay that way.
2. Newspapers and magazines never recovered from the recession and are being displaced by digital.
3. Internet (digital) advertising is growing steadily and will continue to do so.

This chart shows why newspapers are getting smaller, cutting staff and covering less. Some papers have decent websites and do a good job selling display ads on those pages. However, 40 percent of their revenue was coming from classified advertising as recently as 2000. The growing power of Craigslist and eBay means those dollars aren't coming back. Print, as we've known it, is in big trouble. (More on the demise of print here.)

TV has done well because Americans love it. Despite the challenges of time shifted (DVR and online) viewing, television continues to draw advertisers who can afford to pay for it (lots of national brands). Why? Because TV audiences are huge and represent the demographics advertisers want to reach.

It's important to note that some of the lines between television, digital and even print are becoming blurred. If you watch a YouTube video on your TV, how should that be counted? If you go to a newspaper website to read a story or watch a video, what's that? My guess is that newspapers will get better at selling web-based ads, which will help them survive in digital form. But traditional newspapers are going the way of the dinosaurs.

Connecting the Dots
Back to the original question: How does the shift toward digital media marketing relate to the craziness in the craft beer scene? That's where this was leading, right? Yup.

Look, social media marketing is a perfect fit for the craft beer industry. It enables breweries and pubs to establish connections with customers that would be impossible and prohibitively expensive with "blast" mediums like TV or print. Facebook, Twitter are highly effective, targeted marketing mediums.

Here's the catch: In order to stay engaged with fans, you've got to constantly provide fresh content. That objective takes on the form of special events, beer release parties, small festivals, chowder challenges and a whole lot more. Craft brewers use these activities to revitalize their relationship with beer fans.

I still contend the beer community could do a better job coordinating the event calendar. How? I'm not really sure. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe having a ready supply of possible destinations at any given time is a good thing. Time reveals all.

Maximizing the Power of Social Media

I'm not sure who reads this blog. Maybe no one outside immediate friends and family. But I suspect a few fellow bloggers, media types and brewery people click in here from time to time. My guess is there aren't a lot of casual beer fans reading this or any other blog.

Most of us who write about beer, paid or unpaid, have Google alerts that provide a constant flow of information related to craft beer...grist for the mill, as it were. It's easy to set one of these alerts up and an efficient way to get regular updates on what's happening in beer land. But I digress.

Yesterday, my Google alert delivered a link to a story confirming what I already knew or suspected about craft breweries and social media: craft breweries lean heavily on social media for promotion and advertising. There's a big reason for this, which I'll get to, but there's a general point I want to make first.

Almost all businesses are trying to figure out how to use social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, blogs like this, etc.) to build their brands and increase revenue. This is happening at a time when the power and reach of traditional media (TV, radio and print) appears to be diminishing in relation to its cost.

Of course, some businesses aren't great fits for social media promotion...likely because they have a product that has zero appeal on the open market. A company that makes smart bombs, for instance, may be a poor fit for social media. You get the idea.

Craft beer is on the flip side of the coin. It's a product that is sold to the public and, more importantly, there is a growing segment of the customer base that is quite rabid about the product. This is an ideal setup for social media because rabid customers can be used to draw in additional fans via word-of-mouth advertising. In a nutshell, this is the heart of social media advertising.

Which brings me back to craft breweries. And why they are leaning on social media. They're doing it partly because they see the value; more importantly, they're doing it because they can't afford to promote and advertise in traditional ways. Budweiser and MillerCoors spend close to $1 billion a year to promote beer that is essentially undrinkable. Craft brewers have a quality product, but shallow pockets.

Why am I bringing this up? Because many craft breweries do not do social media well. They aren't alone in doing social media poorly, admittedly. One of the mistaken assumptions with respect to the social media concept is that anyone can do it. Someone who works in a small brewery and knows something about the web and computers is likely involved in running the social media program.

What's wrong with that? The problem, contrary to prevailing opinion, is that running a successful social media program requires communications skills, knowledge of the medium and planning. Back when traditional media was king, advertising messages were filtered. There's no such thing with social media. Everyone is a prospective expert.

Some of the results: disjointed posts, spelling and grammatical errors, lousy (usually dark or blurry) photos, poor quality video, too many frivolous posts or too few posts to be relevant. In short, bad social media presence. I see it every day on Facebook and Twitter, arguably the most powerful sites.

Look, I know social media is evolving and businesses, including breweries and pubs, will adapt. One of the adjustments they need to make to maximize their social media presence is go pro. They need people who can write effectively, take decent photos and think strategically when it comes to creating a coherent, branded, social media presence.

Sure there's going to be a cost. But this work is too important to be farmed out to an employee, whether it's the owner or a dishwasher, just because that person thinks he or she is an expert. It just ain't so.