Luke Nicholas of Epic Brewing Company realised that a cheap and highly successful way of gaining customers for his new beer is to use the electronic media his potential customers use: internet email, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Friendfeed and Flickr. The promotion is free, personal and interactive.
“I’ve used the internet in business for over ten years and I know that on-line tools, used properly, can be very cost effective”.
It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see 
While large established businesses often have substantial marketing resources to promote their brand, new products or special offers, start-up companies rarely have much of a marketing budget to contact customers and build brand awareness.
The challenge for Luke Nicholas, the Managing Director of Epic Brewing Company in Auckland, was to get people around the country talking about his new beer with only a tiny promotional budget to spend. To find the answer, he turned to what he knew: technology.
A confirmed “gadget geek”, Luke made the decision to use on-line technology as Epic’s principal form of branding and marketing. The more traditional marketing methods would only be used as support. “I’ve used the internet in business for over ten years and I know that on-line tools, used properly, can be very cost effective. Perhaps the biggest change I’ve seen is that my target audience is pretty technology-savvy and is becoming more so every day,” he says.
Luke believes that people aged 25-45 do not get their information from billboards, television or even newspaper adverts anymore. “These people use the internet, email, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Friendfeed and Flickr to gather information to help make their real-world purchases. Epic has a strong on-line presence on all these platforms – in fact, they are all listed on the back of my business card,” Luke says.
One of the strengths of these new media is they are much more interactive. “I want to get people interested in my product and be able to continue to connect with them. If they sign up with you on Facebook or Twitter, they can always access you and you can always access them. People can follow me on Twitter, which is basically a micro-blog which I can use to build up interest in a new product,” Luke says.
Epic is looking to take advantage of a wider consumer trend which sees people looking for smaller, niche and more personal companies. “A lot of New Zealanders are over big consumer brands. That is not just in beer – it is across the board. People want brands with more personality and more quality. For beer, that also means more flavour. It costs them more but many people in my target demographic have some extra disposable income,” he says.
The big companies, no matter how hard they try, cannot really follow Luke’s marketing strategy. “They might have the technology but they can’t get the personal connection because they are too big and have too much to lose. As a result, they are often missing out on the increasing number of people who use this sort of technology every day,” says Luke.
Luke is happy to give an example to show how technology helps him promote his company. He used his email lists to let people know that a special beer would be available from his stand at the Auckland Food Show but only if people asked for it by name – Armageddon. “That was a targeted message to people in Auckland that made them feel special and rewarded them for being interested in Epic. I also signed up hundreds more that day for the mailing list when they found out about the giveaway,” he notes.
That example does illustrate some of the challenges this technological approach has. Luke explains that he still has to find each person to target them. “I basically have to rely on word of mouth, both physical and on-line. When it comes to mailing lists or on-line networks, quality is more important than numbers. You want people who are interested and engaged rather than people who just sign up or, worse, leave a dead address. It is critical to keep track of where you found people so you can segment them regionally and by interest. Any time you contact a person, it should be as relevant as possible.”
Technology can be intimidating to many people and the pace of change is definitely accelerating. He warns that the right thing today may not be the right thing tomorrow.
Luke provides some advice: “Just sign up to anything new. Try to follow where the masses are going but, if you can, try to get ahead of the pack and pick up new technology in the early adoption phase before it gets really popular. Learn how to use the technology and accept this will mean you will make some mistakes. Plus, lots of stuff doesn’t actually work out. Play around with it, try it, see if it catches on and find out if it’s easy to use. If it’s hard to use then dump it because your customers certainly will.”
This approach, Luke concedes, is not easy and it takes time to build up. However, he does believe it is a way to build a brand with no cash. “I try hard to keep everything connected together but there are a number of different communication channels which people use in different ways. That is the way it is going to be in the future. My role is to ensure I keep coming back to the common interest – my beer. I guess I’m lucky as a closet computer geek that I have been able to bring my twin interests or obsessions of gadgets and beer together!” he laughs.
There are other spin-offs from his approach. Luke believes that increasingly reporters and editors source a lot of their stories from what they see on-line. “I get a lot of free media coverage from publications as diverse as Cuisine, Dish, The Herald and Top Gear magazine. The Cuisine one was so random. I was running a beer tasting on a plane to San Francisco and met the editor. She put it in the magazine, I turned it into a blog post and I’ve been getting positive comments from around the world since,” he says.
Perhaps appropriately, Luke has been able to focus on creating brand awareness because Epic implemented a virtual business model which has freed him from filling in packing slips and ringing up couriers all day. “I made the decision to out-source to specialists in all the areas where I could find a competitive price and good value. We have out-sourced manufacturing, warehousing, freight, sales agents – what else don’t I do now – oh yes, outsourced accounting,” he says sounding very happy.
“It used to be all done manually. Now the process is more automated and – importantly – not done by me. It has freed me up to work on the business. I know I am giving away a bit of margin now but it lets me get the best value out of me. Once the company scales up a bit the balance sheet will look a lot nicer. That will come with time thanks to the growing buzz around the brand,” Luke says.
