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MillerCoors-owned Colorado Native starts dialogue with drinkers via bar codes

BOSTON ? Miller Coors? Colorado Native placed mobile bar codes on its packaging to build a dialogue with consumers.

During the ?Building Brand Power and Loyalty Through the Marriage of Grassroots and High Tech Marketing,? session at DMA 2011 Conference and Exhibition, executives discussed how with little money mobile can help build a relationship between consumers and brands.

?Our beer, Colorado Native, is brewed and shared locally, said Glenn Knippenberg, cofounder and president of AC Golden Brewing Co., Boulder, CO. ?We wanted to find a competitive advantage.

?Beer marketers in the past and still today often engage in a monologue and blast their messages in one way,? he said. ?We look at advertising from our competition as a monologue and we wanted to create a dialogue.?

Mobile dialogue
Colorado Native tapped SypderLink to help the company execute its mobile marketing initiative.

The company placed SnapTags on its beer bottles.

?We knew that if we were going to market this, then we have to go where the customers are and they?re on their phones,? Mr. Knippenberg said. ?The logical decision was to use the 2D bar codes to reach them.

?We looked at a lot of alternatives such as QR codes, Jagtags, Microsoft Tags and short codes,? he said.

?But with SnapTags, we were able to use our logo and our packaging and marketing materials have become interactive marketing tools.?

According to Mr. Knippenberg, word of mouth was used to drive the SnapTag activation.

Unlike regular SnapTags that feature instructions such as text a keyword to a short code or snap a photo to an email, Colorado Native chose to take that away.

?Colorado Native?s target consumer wants to discover and not be marketed to,? Mr. Knippenberg said. ?By taking the instructions off, it really does force discovery.?

According to Mr. Knippenberg, Colorado Native used 17 different SnapTags.

?We wanted to know if somebody snapped a tag on a pint glass,? Mr. Knippenberg said. ?Because then we?re pretty sure they?re in a bar.

?If it?s on a 12-pack, we?re pretty sure they?re not in a bar,? he said. ?So our messaging to them would be different.

?We wanted to know what?s important to our drinkers and we used SnapTags to learn that ? we?re having a dialogue with our drinkers.?

Mobile plan
Colorado Native used mobile bar codes for several initiatives.

For example, the company donates 25 cents for every case it sells. When it raised $15,000, it used mobile bar codes to ask customers which charity should receive the donation.

Additionally, to commemorate Colorado?s 135th birthday, Colorado Native?s mobile bar codes led consumers to a teaser video that featured Mr. Knippenberg and Peter Coors.

The video encouraged consumers to tune in to the Colorado Rockies and Phillies game during the seventh inning and see the governor proclaim August as Colorado Proud Month.                    

?There was a lot of TV awareness and the cool part was that we had people all over the state of Colorado in bars with Colorado Natives,? Mr. Knippenberg said.

The mobile bar codes helped Colorado Native build its database and better targeted consumers.

?SnapTags initiate a brand experience,? said Nicole Skogg, CEO of Spyderynk, Denver, CO.

When consumers snapped the mobile bar code they began having a conversation with the company.

The company expanded the mobile bar codes to t-shirts, coasters, retail signage, six-packs and bar and restaurant table-top signage.

?The menu of conversation options allow Colorado Native to talk to consumers about what they are interested in,? Ms. Skogg said.                

Final Take
Glenn Knippenberg, president, AC Golden Brewing Co.