BEVY LONG DRINK
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Craft Beer Giant, Boston Beer Co., Utilizes Consumer Analytics to Launch and Evaluate a New Product
2022 CASE STUDY
FROM HELINSKI TO BOSTON
Bevy Long Drink is the brainchild of The Boston Beer Company, a brewery so well-known it needs no real introduction. As the fourth largest brewer in the U.S., Boston Beer Co. is known for their popular brands like Samuel Adams, Dogfish Head, Twisted Tea, Truly, and Angry Orchard.
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While industry leaders can easily depend on the old reliables in their portfolio, reacting to new trends to capture or recapture their audience's attention and loyalty is essential to their ongoing success. Recently, canned cocktails packaged for quick consumption and optimal flavors have been finding success with smaller and bigger brands alike. Seeking to build upon their portfolio and innovate, The Boston Beer Company looked to Finland, the home of the Long Drink.
The Long Drink was created by the Finnish government -- they wanted a special drink to serve attendees for the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. The citrus-based cocktail combines gin, grapefruit soda, and tonic. Boston Beer's Bevy is a refreshing, new take on this Nordic classic. The hard sparkling refresher is a cocktail-inspired malt beverage made with a delicious blend of citrus flavors and wild juniper berries.
GEARING UP FOR LAUNCH
Boston Beer launched their newest brand fairly aggressively. Going against the grain, they decided to go for a large national push rather than the the traditional path of testing a product in smaller markets. They pursued a $10-million national introduction of Bevy Long Drink, including putting a large portion of their marketing spend towards a Super Bowl Ad in 2022. Speed was necessity for them to set their product apart in the space and garner a following before other large players joined the space.
With this bold and time-sensitive strategy, the Boston Beer Company needed an e-commerce partner to help track the progress of their product launch. The tools that would be more effective would be:
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A Comprehensive E-Commerce Experience: An attractive and easy to navigate website with a seamless checkout experience to accurate and precise fulfillment across multiple.
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First-Party Data and Analytics: To ensure that they weren't putting good money after bad, Boston Beer Co. needed data on customer retention, return order rates, conversion rates, and cost of customer acquisition to gauge the adoption of their emerging portfolio brand.
A LITTLE TOO SOON
Boston Beer Company's Bevy Long Drink partnered with the Powered By TapRm™ team to support the development of a custom website that could track the success of their newest brand. Additionally, we designed an easy-to-read dashboard that tracked sales data, trends, and other key metrics. Using consumer geo-mapping, we provided a unique opportunity to identify where customers were and how they were engaging with Bevy.
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The numbers were incredibly impactful. It became obvious very quickly to Boston Beer Co. that despite being a great tasting and innovative option, Bevy Long Drink was not gaining the kind of traction they were expecting.
The insights gained from working with Powered By TapRm™ helped Boston Beer Co. make the difficult decision to halt production of Bevy, and re-examine how they launch emerging innovative brands. An insight like this could save a business millions of dollars in sales and marketing expenses that a brand would normally be required to spend on a nationwide launch.
For now, Bevy Long Drink has a possibility to return in the near future, with a possible relaunch when the category is more mature. Boston Beer Co. will instead continue to focus on testing young brands in smaller markets before moving nationally.
Bevy Long Drink x 'Powered by TapRm' ™ Partnership Highlights
Halted Production within One Year of Launch
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Estimated Savings Associated with Ceasing Production Early
$7M
BEVY LONG DRINK
Bevy Long Drink Website:
Boston Beer Co. Website