Best Business-to-business Campaign
Targeting the trade can be as exciting and innovative as targeting the consumer, so if you’ve concocted a campaign that persuades landlords to serve your beer, or masterminded an approach to the off-trade, here’s your category.
Good old B2B is much maligned, the poor relation of the more glamorous categories here. Or at least, that’s the theory, anyway. When we’ve been involved in developing campaigns in the past, the ‘trade’ bit is often relegated to the end, a quickly thought-out message that uses the imagery of the main consumer campaign, tells your customers how much money you’re spending on that campaign (always grossly exaggerated) and reassures them that you are number one in your category (even if you have to come up with a very convoluted definition of what that category is before you can make that claim.) And yet, in the first year of the beer marketing awards, this was the most creatively vibrant category we had, and certainly the hardest to judge. When this was consolidated in our second year, we realise that good, imaginative B2B in this industry is often about giving publicans and retailers something of genuine value and really helping them. This isn’t philanthropic – it’s a way of ensuring loyalty, display, even creating spokespeople who will eulogise your brand to the consumer. Or maybe you’ve found yet another way of reinventing the discipline?
Previous winners
2017: Britain`s Beer Alliance – There’s A Beer For That
The B2B angle of this year’s There’s A Beer For That campaign was focused on getting beer more exposure in the off-trade, increasing visibility, presence and relevance with displays, tastings and events. It was a concerted effort to have beer appear in food aisles, reinforcing beer’s suitability with food.
2016: Island Records/Soundwaves Brewing/Two Tribes Brewery/Boutique Bar Brands/La Boca
These awards are about inspiring others and raising the overall standard of marketing in beer. All entries were very strong creative ideas that generated plenty of interest. But the ‘Shazamable’ can – whereby the beer can can be ‘read’ to access a playlist relevant to the beer – struck us as completely original, a great way to add value, and something that can inspire others.