Asheville, North Carolina has become the southeastern hub for craft food and beverages. From James Beard award-winners to a plethora of renowned breweries providing suds around every corner (more breweries per capita than any other U.S. city), Asheville is hopping with good eats and quality beverages. Cutting through the noise to stand out in this blossoming regional food and beverage scene means thinking outside the box — and thinking collaboratively.
Our clients, Poppy Handcrafted Popcorn and Devil’s Foot Beverage Company, each possessed unique goals for positioning their new products in the regional media landscape and garnering attention from an array of important media outlets.
By implementing unconventional craft food and beverage PR strategies, we positioned the collaborative spirit behind each brand initiative front and center, designing earned media campaigns that focused on the involvement of others to increase the hype around each individual brand.
The Challenge: Leaning into Craft Food and Beverage PR Collaboration
Poppy Handcrafted Popcorn has garnered a dedicated consumer base over the eight years they’ve been in business. With flavors like Cinnamon Bourbon Pecan, Pimento Cheese, and Salted Carmel, it’s no wonder popcorn enthusiasts are as crazy about Poppy’s flavors as “Corn Kid” is about his corn. It’s safe to say our office consumes its collective body weight in Poppy each and every year.
Recently, we had an exciting opportunity to promote the brand—design and implement a new product launch campaign that featured a collaboration made in flavor heaven—a Poppy x Spicewalla series of gourmet popcorn. Yes, that Spicewalla—the renowned brand founded by James Beard award-winning chef Meherwan Irani.
An opportunity like this provides the spice of life, as they say, and we got right to work. Our true challenge was to design a PR campaign strategy that maximized the collaborative nature of this product launch, attracting new customers from the foodie and gourmet sectors, while introducing the adventurously spice-forward flavors to the loyal Poppy customers in an approachable way.
Across town, the co-founders of Devil’s Foot were busy brewing up their tasty non-alcoholic craft beverages and wanting to make a splash into Dry January in the Asheville area. Devil’s Foot tasked us with establishing them as the go-to Asheville-based non-alcoholic beverage and mixer option throughout Dry January, while also honoring its relationships with local breweries, bars, and mixologists.
Devil’s Foot brews up delicious farm-to-can craft sodas combining fresh, local, organic roots, juices, cane sugar, and honey to create…liquid gold. In fact, when the crack and fizzle of a Devil’s Foot beverage opening rings throughout our office—the whole team comes sprinting, desperate to see if the mini-fridge has been restocked with the likes of ginger beer and sparkling lemon and limeade.
The Solution: Lifting Up Others
Collaboration often brings out the best in creative and unconventional thinking. Our team reveled in the opportunity to engage with other well-respected Asheville entities in the creative process as we designed these PR campaigns for both Poppy Handcrafted Popcorn and Devil’s Foot Beverage Company.
Working alongside the talented Spicewalla team, we developed a digital marketing strategy for the new product line launch that focused on using co-branded assets, social media posts, and email marketing campaigns on Poppy’s owned channels. Simultaneously, we designed a PR outreach strategy that highlighted the collaborative nature of this launch, complimenting the messaging and tone of Poppy’s owned media. The goal was to generate early buzz from two key demographics: Poppy’s most loyal customers and highly-respected media, both providing important 3rd party validation.
In anticipation of Devil’s Foot desire to be the non-alcoholic beverage for Dry January in the Asheville area, we developed the concept of an Asheville Mocktail Trail. This Mocktail Trail would be a list of bars serving custom-crafted non-alcoholic mocktail options in the Asheville area. From here, we connected Devil’s Foot with Asheville Rooftop Bar Tours and crafted messaging, collected assets, and wrote drink descriptions to highlight the Asheville Mocktail Trail featuring Devil’s Foot-inspired non-alcoholic options at rooftop bars along the tour.
The Outcome: Collaboration Pays Off
With buy-in from collaborators on both of these projects, we generated impressive results.
Our team spearheaded the design and implementation of 19 pieces of owned media coverage across Poppy’s social and email channels, stoking interest from existing consumers. Additionally, we generated five pieces of earned media coverage, introducing the collaborative flavor launch through respected media across the country. The results? A 37% year-over-year increase in website traffic from owned channels and a reach of 580 million from PR coverage.
Back at the Devil’s Foot collab, the Asheville Mocktail Trail proved a hit with consumers and media alike. Regionally, we generated six pieces of coverage on the Asheville Mocktail Trail accumulating a reach of over 500,000. This resulted in a 327% year-over-year increase in referral traffic to the Devil’s Foot website in the month of January.
Spice It Up With a Collaborative Approach
By combining client collaboration with a bit of ingenuity, we were able to secure craft food and beverage PR success for both of our clients and maximize the efforts they put into building these collaborations.
When your brand or company isn’t seeing results from the old tried and true tactics, it could be time to spice it up a bit, think outside the box, and consider what can be done differently to stand out in a crowd of like-minded companies. Discover how we help our clients do just this, with our approach and service offerings.