How BrewDog successfully expanded its Equity for Punks crowdfunding campaign into international markets.
Started by Martin Dickie and James Watt in 2007, BrewDog has grown from a small craft beer brewery in Scotland to a multinational brand with four international breweries and over 100 bar franchises open across the globe.
BrewDog is known for its daring marketing campaigns and its crowdsourced approach to funding. Its Equity for Punks program, which initially launched in 2009 and has gone through several rounds, allows ordinary people to buy shares in BrewDog for £25 a share.
Having already worked with Fifty on a lead generation campaign, BrewDog sought to use Fifty to run a multi-channel digital marketing campaign for an Equity for Punks crowdfunding round that was looking to raise £7m. The aim was to not only target those already within the BrewDog realm - customers' from their CRM database - but also get an expanded understanding of their customer base and social following to find untapped audiences in new markets who might be interested in investing.
Fifty ran multiple audience insight studies using social and CRM data to build a holistic understanding of BrewDog's UK and international fanbase. Our in-house media buying team mapped these insights across digital platforms, creating detailed targeting tactics across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn, as well as programmatically through display and video.
The campaign ran in several international markets including Spain, Germany and Australia, with Fifty's audience insights enabling campaigns to be targeted to each country's specific idiosyncrasies.
Across every campaign, on every platform and in every territory, Fifty delivered an exceptional average ROI of over 600%, extending to 678% on Facebook and 692% for Open Web. The partnership was particularly successful for BrewDog in delivering growth and revenue in new international markets, particularly Germany and Holland where ROI rates were 435%and 387% respectively.
Fifty's ability to transform CRM and social data into unique audience clusters based on their shared passions and behaviours, can uncover new audiences that you may not know you had.
In this case, running bespoke audience analysis in multiple international markets enabled Fifty to deliver tailored marketing strategies based on the unique interests and values of each audience. For example, although niche, Swedish Digital Innovators and Cosmopolitan French Millennials both emerged as highly engaged audiences that ultimately proved key for crowdfunding.