EFMP’s German partner, HTW/O Promotion GmbH, has had many clients in the FMCG sector, such as, Bitburger, Teatox  and Gerolsteiner, to name some. As those past collaborations  proved to be a great success, the traditional German brewery, "König" also approached HTW/O to promote their new beer to a new generation of beer drinkers. Based in Duisburg, the “Konig” brewery produces millions of liters of beer every year.  Their beer is particularly popular in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Over the years, "König" has successfully built up a large customer base which they wanted to extend. So it was a matter of expanding this customer base by appealing to a different consumer age group. The younger generation who are of drinking age in particular,  was identified as the target group.

To achieve this goal, König selected its newest and most innovative product for the promotion which was  designed to appeal to the target group. Their choice: König Rotbier, a mild and fruity beer.

The Strategy

König Rotbier  was to be introduced as an unconventional type of beer in the König-brewery’s home area. The area identified for this activity was the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, especially the locations of Düsseldorf, Essen, Duisburg and Oberhausen. These areas were specifically indicated as optimal cities for this promotion due to their high population density.

In order to fulfill the brief of König Brauerei, the HTW/O team put together several promotional teams consisting of logisticians and hostesses. It was important to recruit experienced people, who were trained in their field  and were appointed as brand ambassadors.

HTW/O was responsible for the recruitment and training of all marketing and sales personnel and they worked in conjunction with Konig Brauerei for the development and implementation of the campaign to introduce Konig Rotbier to a younger market.

The implementation

The promotion period of the campaign ran from end of September to mid-October 2019, when numerous bars, restaurants and pubs were visited. Konig Rotbier tastings were organized and every customer had the opportunity to taste the new “Rotbier“.

The goal was not only to ensure the marketing on site, but also to distribute the product information via an internet presence. Therefore, to promote this, every consumer who took a photo of the live promotion featuring Konig Rotbier during the tasting, and posted it via their social media channels, could take part in an exclusive raffle. And, in order to get optimal pictures, HTW/O created a special “Selfie Ring”, to be used for the picture taking and as a result,  studio quality photographs were produced for this purpose.

Conclusion

The König Rotbier Promotion was a  resounding success. Due to the promotional campaign which was conducted locally, and due to the  dissemination of product information over Social Media, the range of the product distribution could be increased substantially. The König Brewery, delighted with the result achieved for them by EFMP’s German Partner, HTW/O, is already  planning a further  collaboration, and steps for a new campaign are already being initiated.