Using Alternative Media to Increase Sales by 25%

Local Digital Campaign Successfully Outperformed Industry Averages Across All Metrics

“It sounded like a nice idea when introduced but I never expected the results to be so conclusive or dramatic.”

Peter Fazio
Southern Division Manager, Yuengling

Executive Summary

With the dramatic rise of competitive breweries in the United States, sales of Yuengling were stalling and sliding. The brand approached A3 Media searching for solutions, which would satisfy their large chain retail clients concerns and help to turn around their decreasing
sales trends.

Goals

Educate retail and on-premise accounts to show the value in participating in the “Test Market” digital campaign
Prove a positive and measurable increase in sales correlating national and local digital tools, directly with each individual participant in the “Test Market” digital campaign
Increase brand awareness

Obstacles

Approach

The agency had to overcome several obstacles including: a gap in technology between advertising placement and sales lift. They would also need to identify a single strategy which would appeal to the client’s large chain retail accounts and prove conclusively the broad influence media could have on sales lift with adults 21-54 on a local level.

After an investigation into the individual markets and relevant mediums, A3 Media identified subscription-based apps, Pandora and HULU, as the best delivery platforms to accomplish the goals for
the brand. Each outlet provided ample impressions on the most
geo-targeted local market levels around all participating locations and were selected for their ability to reach the 21-54 audience.

The marketing plan, which would take place in nine markets within three states, included delivery of “branded ads” through Pandora
and Hulu followed by an immediate “feature ad” for the local venue.
The ads would be delivered multiple times to the targeted audience during a thirty-day period.

A3 Media would also incorporate a proprietary software, called M3, which would enable the campaign’s effectiveness to be tracked at every point from ad delivery to the point of sale and gather consumer’s locations and mobile numbers for each individual
retail participant.

Each participating retail account would offer a “featured product and price” with no media running for thirty days. This would establish a baseline for the “Test Market” campaign. The next thirty days the media campaign would begin, promoting the same “featured product and price” so the results could be measured accurately against the previous thirty days.

Results

Measurements for the first thirty days, with no media running, sales results were relatively flat and/or slightly negative. During the following thirty days with the media campaign running, all nine-markets campaigns proved to be successful. Sales lift ranged from +12.2% to +39.4%, with the average increase of +27% across all nine markets during this time period.

Sales were not only positive year over year during the same thirty-day period with the “Test Market” campaign, but the increase in sales proved large enough to send annual sales numbers positive in all nine markets. In one market the campaign directly reversed negative sales trends and turned them positive for the entire year.

Additional Benefits

In addition to increasing sales, A3 Media’s strategy had a positive effect on brand awareness and consumer engagement rates for the individual retail and on-premise accounts. Over the course of the campaign, click thru rates increased by a factor seven times the national average, yielding 4.5%. The success of the campaign was noticed by many, including multinational marketing research firm, Millward Brown.

In an in-depth study performed by Millward Brown, the Pandora portion of the campaign revealed positive findings including:

Outperforming industry averages across all metrics
Proving the selected medium was an ideal fit for the campaign
Reaching the right audience and achieving its campaign goal of influencing consumers to purchase Yuengling in the future

Summary

A3 Media achieved Yuengling’s goals by educating important retail accounts on the value of a combined national and local geo-targeted digital campaign, increasing sales and bringing more attention and purchase intent to the brand. In addition, the agency was able to prove the correlation of using national delivery tools coupled with local software applications and trackable metrics which made a difference in the success of their campaign.

A3 Media was able to overcome the obstacle of increasing sales when reaching a broad audience with a single medium. Combining the M3 software, to track the influence of the campaign, something the national apps could not accomplish on their own, A3 Media was able to gather thousands of cell phone numbers, creating continuing lines of communication with the consumers via opt-in text messages.

This combination allowed A3 Media to track a targeted audience along the life cycle of the campaign from the consumer introduction through their purchase, proving that sales were directly linked to the digital marketing of this campaign.

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