Viewing entries tagged
brewdog

We write our monthly roundups in order to inspire a conversation around creativity, brand purpose, and the positive impact we can have on society.  In the event of covid-19, the global pandemic that’s affected our lives so unpredict

We write our monthly roundups in order to inspire a conversation around creativity, brand purpose, and the positive impact we can have on society. 

In the event of covid-19, the global pandemic that’s affected our lives so unpredictably, it’s important to celebrate the incredible efforts by brands out there supporting our health services and communities, as well as helping us be entertained during our collective effort staying at home.

So behold our roundup of brands offering their purposes for good during covid-19: 

Help Hiyacar offer free rides NHS workers

With essential travel coming to a standstill across London and elsewhere in the country - the good eggs at Hiyacar are now offering free car hires to NHS workers* to help them get around to hospitals and home at the end of a shift. Let’s help them spread the word about this to offer to the NHS across socials!

*dependent on ID and insurance of course! 

Guinness’s content for St Patrick’s Day

This Covid-19 situation is an opportunity for brands to re-think about the way they’re talking to their audiences right now. A great example we found of this was this film by Guinness to celebrate St Patrick’s Day this year. 

They’re encouraging their audience to celebrate as normal, and foster their incredible spirit but from the comfort of their homes. It’s a fantastic use of their platform for good karma right now :)
(we actually did a deep dive into how to create great content like this combining UGC, previous assets and great stock here)


Brewdog and their hand sanitiser initiative

Brewdog have offered their distillery in Aberdeen to assist in the production and distribution of Punk Sanitiser. They’re still making beer, but diverted the majority of their stock to produce hand sanitiser, and as of this week have now distributed 50,000 units to NHS hospitals and local charities across the UK.

Deliveries and stock are being handled by extra team members from some of Brewdog’s closed bars - because “united we stand for better beer!”


The Royal Academy of Art and their #RAdailydoodle

Galleries across the world are closed (and yet a Van Gogh painting was stolen in Amsterdam?!) but the Royal Academy of Art wants to make sure art is still accessible to everyone at home. 

So they’ve set up a daily drawing competition on Twitter, giving a daily challenge of different household items to get people drawing and be more creative! It started with legs of ham, but they’ve gone on to wardrobes and even workspaces… it’s a great way to engage people far and wide to be artistic, plus there’s some fun and witty commentary from their social media team on the masterpieces submitted :)

Chip’s new saving techniques to help us during this pandemic

With so much uncertainty in the air it’s expected that many people will now be turning to  their savings, or looking at how much they can save while the brands and business around us is getting used to a new normal. 

Chip saw a massive increase in usage from the first week in March as people turned to their accounts to check on their affairs. And after such a spike, they’ve now introduced new saving techniques to help us during covid-19.  They’ve raised their saving limit to £10K, and even introduced a new personal algorithm that can help increase saving according to your income level… just doing the most to help people where they can at the moment using the tech available.

First Mile offering their services to deliver crucial goods to hospitals

I think we might have mentioned this before but we’re huge fans/users of First Mile in this office, they’re a brand doing great things for our environment and our wastage. 

And for the duration of covid-19, they’re offering their extra drivers and fleet available to deliver leftover food and wellbeing items from closing offices around London to the doctors and nurses at the UCLH. 

So if you know of any closing offices, like co-working spaces or even private offices who have perishables, or even cleaning items/sanitary items - let them know and they’ll be delivered to our frontline NHS medical staff!

Screenshot 2020-04-01 at 12.50.09.png

Glastonbury’s donation of festival supplies to hospitals in the South West

The iconic festival would have celebrated 50 years this year, but for good reasons and to protect everyone’s safety it’s putting off the entire celebration to next year - but we’re not here to have a moan about how hard it is to get tickets!

There’s plenty of tributes and the BBC is setting up an entire digital Glastonbury experience to make up for it, but we wanted to highlight how the Eavis family have donated their entire medical supplies including masks, gloves, sanitiser and more intended for use in June, plus dedicated food provisions already in place, to hospitals across the Somerset county and South West.  It’s awesome and will be a huge help to guaranteeing supplies across the South.

Huggg open up e-vouchers to schools to help feed families

And last but definitely not least, we wanted to highlight what e-voucher start-up Huggg is doing to help in this crisis. They’re usually used for gifting, or even as an HR perk rewarding employees, but mainly stayed in the B2B sector. 

Now they’re opening up their platform to be used by schools to send vouchers to parents and families who rely on free school meals - and these vouchers can be used in supermarkets to redeem the equivalent food necessary to keep kids fed. As of this week it’s also open to charities too - to enable people in isolation to send supermarket vouchers to volunteers to collect groceries.

Their CEO Paul Wickers told the team that "it's been such a privilege to be able to put our resources to work on this important problem. We have our first schools up and running and are happy to open it up to any other schools and trusts looking for a solution while a central one is fixed. We're waiving all platform fees, schools will simply pay for the vouchers that get used and claim it back from the DoE."

If you’ve seen any brands who are doing great things to help us all get through this difficult time, then let us know!

In the words of the NHS: Stay Home and Save Lives. Stay safe everyone x

The top things that mattered to us in February

The top things that mattered to us in February

We’re back with our take on what’s happened during Feb that we think matters, and there’s been a lot going on in the world of purpose-led brands.

1) Ecover’s Laundry Against Landfill campaign


We’ve seen a huge momentum towards the end of last year of brands producing more impactful rallying cries - like this one we covered by Friends of the Earth last month. 

This month the spotlight was shone firmly on the huge amounts of material waste in the fashion industry, by Ecover’s Laundry Against Landfill campaign. We loved how their awareness piece is simply non-preachy yet effective, and how they’ve scaled the campaign to be multi touch-point, providing supplementary ‘how to’ guides on how to properly take care of our clothes on their site. 

Sara Mendez, Marketing Director at Ecover explained that  “with this campaign, we wanted to raise awareness of the problem of fashion waste. But also show people ways they can lessen their impact by falling back in love with the clothes they already own, keeping them in use, and out of landfill”.

2) Cans for Equity by BrewDog


It’s always interesting to see brands explore the ways they can attract and engage their superfans.

Look no further than what Brewdog have launched during Feb, with their Cans for Equity campaign - with the result being you can recycle 50 cans to become an ‘equity punk’ in Brewdog. 

This is such a great way to not just encourage behaviour change in the short-term, but also to show they care about their product at all stages through partnerships with First Mile to give their cans a second life. 

This initiative has created a more intimate perk for their superfans by feeling truly part of the brand, and we applaud it.

3) Sanctus’s campaign for Children’s Mental Health Week

This particular campaign is proof of how a creative can really thrive in the long-term. Sanctus, a brand providing mental health coaching businesses and individuals, decided to flip the script and create a film a couple of years ago on their socials for Children’s Mental Health Week. 

It made a comeback during the past month, and we wanted to highlight how much making this tonal switch on such a sensitive topic matters… it’s so great to see this from a brand with a more corporate audience. 

We spoke to George Bell, the brand and marketing lead at Sanctus who agrees that the power of the film also lies in the script. It’s comedic but authoritative on a subject when “all too often mental health is associated with images of someone sitting in a dark room clutching their head - this is, of course, part of mental health but it's not the full spectrum.”

“Although it's a couple of years old now, we still re-use it and still have a great response every time, which shows that it still remains uncommon for people to see mental health presented in this way.”


4) NHS x Notes to Strangers 

#notestonhs with @imalilo

411 Likes, 1 Comments - Andy Leek (@notestostrangers) on Instagram: "#notestonhs with @imalilo"

We’ve all seen these notes pop up around London over the years and one of our team is a huge fan, so we had put this in our highlight. 

Notes for Strangers started as an Instagram account by ex-creative Andy Leek, writing random notes on telephone boxes and bollards, spreading positivity and kindness where he noticed it’s severely lacking. 

This month we saw the launch of a collab with Notes to Strangers and the NHS, creating posters and notes for hospitals UK-wide to show support for nurses under severe stress. 

Hospitals tend to be a pretty bleak place and these notes are intended to spread positive messages at a time where political conversations are taking up much of the discourse around their work - it’s just a lovely thing to see.


5) ‘Meet the New Joby’ by Joby 


And finally in our roundup we wanted to include this really simple but effective repositioning campaign by Joby. If you don’t know who Joby are - they’re a tech brand that sells tripods for all different devices. 

We love how instead of putting their product front and centre, they hero their creators interacting with their product, weaving in UGC to add a mixed media element. 

It’s great to see Joby are exploring a new creative angle, becoming more experience-focused - so we’re looking forward to seeing their creative progression down the line!


Like what you’re seeing and want to create content that matters?

Email josh@mattr.media and let’s see what we can do...









Marketing Alcohol – Stand up and Stand out (or give up!)

Marketing Alcohol – Stand up and Stand out (or give up!)

Picture this, you’re in the booze aisle at your local supermarket looking for a tipple… what do you see? A wall of generic bottles, confusing taste notes, copycat branding and often a race to the bottom on price. Yet with the rise of the ‘conscious consumer’ (people craving something more than the labels they buy) alcohol brands need to stand up and stand out if they are going to survive.

Just take a look at the beer market. Despite declining sales, one group is bucking the trend and growing rapidly - craft beer. Once a niche player, craft beer now makes up a whopping 24% of the total beer market in the US (Source: USA Today). Why? Because they offer consumers what they crave: depth, story and a purpose beyond the brand.

Need some inspiration? Look no further than BrewDog who skyrocketed to fame (and fortune) by ripping up the rule book when it comes to the alcohol sector. Brewdog’s branding, marketing, PR, staff culture and even core business model all reek of a brand that stands for more than their product.

(a snapshot of the weird and wonderful universe of BrewDog)


So how can you future proof your booze brand?

Step 1: Stand Up

Insights from the 2018 William Grant & Sons Market Report heralded the rise of a new consumer type ‘The Activ-ist’. These consumers are actively considering, caring and conscious about their purchases, how they consume them and their effect on the wider world. 

With alcohol in the past typically sold with snazzy campaigns and celebrity endorsements, now focus is shifting to the experience around the drink. To connect to consumers on a deeper level think beyond the liquid, what’s the environment, the atmosphere, the occasion, and the people you share it with.

You can see evidence of this shift with the rise of brand activations, experiential events, distillery tours and bar take-overs, all great ways to tap into the ‘Experience Economy’ but brands must think beyond one-off PR stunts to survive.

For example, take Grey Goose’s recent repositioning, starting from the ground up they have shifting their entire comms strategy away from the bottle to the experience around it, thus connecting with audiences on a much deeper level. Chief Marketing Officer at Grey Goose, Lee Applbaum said this: "'Good enough' has become a norm in the category, which has been dumbed down through price compression and clever, but often misleading marketing. Consumers are having a hard time connecting emotionally with Grey Goose. So, our energy with the brand is focussed on reconnecting with the consumers.”

(59 seconds of experiences, 1 second of product)

Step Two: Stand Out

With such heavy competition in the alcohol sector, how do you create cut through? Simple, switch the script, do the unexpected and stand out against the noise of your category.

When we began working with Grant’s Whisky our task was simple; punch above our weight and take on the Goliaths of the Whisky world by unlocking a new youth market.

Mattr’s first step was to conduct a series of market research sessions with this youth audience. We discovered whisky was often referred to as ‘the drink my father would choose’ and ‘not for me’. Another common theme we discovered in the sector was that of ‘personal progress’, a narrative pushed heavily by big players such as Johnnie Walker. As a result, our target audience negatively perceived Whisky as less sociable, a drink just for home or even alone.

We took our learnings from our market research and flipped the script … No more ‘drink of my father’ more ‘drink with my mates’ no more ‘personal progress’ - more ‘collective success’. The outcome? A TTL campaign that celebrated groups of friends starting an epic party. The result? A campaign which felt unexpected for its category yet tapped into what youth consumers craved, an experience beyond the product.

And one last thing… having a killer narrative is great but shouldn’t stop there; Alcohol brands have got to embrace a strong and consistent visual identity too. Your brand could have the greatest positioning in the world but if a consumer can’t remember your brand at the point of purchase you’ve failed - misattribution in advertising is killer. To avoid this in our Grant’s campaigns, we used consistent visual brand queues throughout (threes, triangles, colour pallets etc.) even a hand symbol synonymous with the bottle shape itself. The result was a campaign that felt unmistakably ‘Grant’s’ narratively AND visually.

(who wants to join the party?)

Mattr’s top 5 take-aways:

1.      Build brand depth, stand for something more than your product.

2.      Embrace the experience beyond the taste.

3.      Listen to your audience, what are their preconceptions of your category.

4.      Do the unexpected for your category.

5.      Be memorable keep it consistent and project a strong visual identity.

If you enjoyed reading this don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter (see below) for more articles and exclusive invites to events where we talk about how to make marketing that ‘Mattr’s’. If you work in the alcohol sector and this struck a chord with you drop us a line and lets meet for a coffee… or something a little harder ;)

Lets chat: Mrhine@mattr.media - Head of Creative (also likes a drink)

The 6 steps you need to follow to create a killer crowdfunding video

The 6 steps you need to follow to create a killer crowdfunding video

Like many start-ups raising investment through crowdfunding, fintech brand Chip knew their investment video was crucial. With only 2 weeks till the raise, they were worried the traditional ‘talking head’ interview with their founder they had produced just didn’t do their mission justice. They needed help…and fast!

Enter Mattr Media, who helped create one of the fastest ever campaigns to reach £1m (eventually raising over £3.5m+ with a 380% oversubscription rate) and a video shortlisted for Crowdcube’s Video and Campaign of the Year.

So, how did we do it? And how do we continue to achieve record-breaking results for our other crowdfunding clients? Well, the below are 6 key steps we take with all our crowdfunding projects…


RULE 1: DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR VIDEO

Unlike pitching to traditional investors, you aren’t going to necessarily meet crowdfunding investors face to face and they aren’t just looking for a 10x return.

Dan Hardy, Head of Business Development at Crowdcube, summed up perfectly why that means your video is so important: “video is the dominant media format online and since Crowdcube is primarily an online investment platform... (so) your pitch video is the best chance you have for investors to learn about you and your business…”

So doing one and doing it well is crucial.

RULE 2: TELL A STORY

So how do you do that? Well, don’t forget on crowdfunding platforms, most of the people watching your film are not as financially savvy as traditional investors. So whilst top-level metrics are important, it’s just as crucial to answer deeper introspective questions that your audience will connect with. Things like “why did we start this in the first place? What’s the problem we’re trying to solve? How can we show we’re a big deal (PR/Awards/Team etc.)? What does the future hold?”

It’s also important to not get lost in explaining the “features” of your product. As Hardy explains, “the objective here is to get people to invest in your business, not to buy your product. That's a big difference… You need to strike the right balance.”

Overall, keep the message simple and save the detail for additional supportive content.

RULE 3: BE DISTINCTIVE 

Depending on how much time you’ve spent defining your brand tone of voice, this will make life easier or more challenging for you. But if you haven’t the foggiest, this is where a creative partner like us can help.

In order to make this video feel distinctly “you”, it’s helpful to consider questions like-

  • If we were a brand from a different sector, which would we choose to be?

  • If we had 3 words to describe how we want people to feel after watching this, what should they be?

  • If we had 3 words to describe our product, what would they be?

  • If we imagined our brand as a celebrity, who would they be? And why?

It’s exactly these kinds of questions that led us to creating such a fun and quirky fundraiser for Chip.

RULE 4: PUT YOUR AUDIENCE FIRST

The rise in popularity of crowdfunding has been born out of a desire for consumers to feel more connected with the brands they buy from. And that’s why so many successful crowdfunding campaigns are community focused - just look at Monzo and their amazing £20m crowdfund, or Brewdog and their 2000% overfund to total £10m. 

Alex Latham, Chip’s CMO says “It’s really imperative that our staff and customers feel a part of our mission, particularly for crowdfunding. There was no better way of doing this than when Mattr recommended we champion these guys in our films. I would say a lot of our Crowdcube success has been because of this attitude. ”

You should not underestimate the value of people being your advocates, helping spread the word for you and hopefully investing too.

RULE 5: CREATE VALUE BEYOND THE HERO FILM

For some investors, watching your main film may not be enough to sway them to part with their money. So think about what content you can create to support their final decision. 

Supportive “product explainer” films are great for the nitty-gritty you haven’t spoken about in the main film and of course, there’s the pitch deck for the financials. However, if budget can stretch, we also encourage films about the staff.

It surprises us that not too many companies create update films on how the raise is going  after the campaign goes live, a useful tool to stay top of mind.

RULE 6: CHOOSE THE RIGHT PARTNER

Most video agencies have fixed “packages” (as do we) for crowdfunding campaigns and many of us have proven experience, so how do you choose the right partner?

A big component of that will be whether you believe your chosen agency is not just doing this to get paid, but ultimately because they believe in your business.

You can gage part of this from initial conversations and the value they provide. But whether they “walk the walk” is tough. That’s why at Mattr we developed two further offerings to the standard package, which aligns us even further to you in your quest for a successful raise:

  1. A part fixed fee part success fee package 

  2. A pure success fee package (i.e. absolutely no up front fee to do so)

Finally…

You’re at an exciting stage in your company’s journey, but we know your video will be a crucial piece in the success of your campaign. If you’re interested in learning more, do contact Chief Shmoozer Josh at josh@mattr.media