Newcastle Celebrates 'Underdog' Role

White Plains, N.Y. — Leveraging the passion surrounding one of America’s most celebrated sports events – the NCAA college basketball tournament – Heineken USA Inc. launched an “Unofficial Beer of the Underdog” program in March to promote Newcastle Brown Ale, which it imports from England. “Newcastle Brown Ale drinkers don’t take themselves too seriously, love a good joke and, most importantly, tell it like it is,” says Jonathan Simpson, director of portfolio commercial marketing for Heineken USA. “They also love college basketball.”Simpson says Heineken calculated that nearly a third of Newcastle Brown Ale drinkers (31%) would be watching college basketball’s annual showcase, and the marketing program was conceived in the true spirit of the event. “We wanted to make things a little more interesting,” he says. “Throughout the tournament, everyone rallies for the little guy who succeeds despite the odds.”A social media sweepstakes invited fans to tweet their underdog picks with an #UnofficialUnderdog hashtag for the chance to win prizes. At the end of each tournament game, winners were sent direct messages with instructions for prize redemption. The sweeps encouraged daily participation and rewarded non-winning participants with mail-in rebates on Newcastle Brown Ale. Ongoing messaging on Facebook and Twitter also drove awareness of the program and motivated consumers to tweet for the underdogs.In addition to the influence the program had on sales, Heineken planned to measure the number of tweets and re-tweets through the @Newcastle Twitter handle to judge how successfully the brand engaged the target audience. “As this is Newcastle’s first program drive through Twitter,” he says, “we are setting metrics based on other Heineken USA Twitter program performance.”Numerous retailers participated in the program on- and off-premises in both independent and national account outlets. The Newcastle brand image was kept front and center in key markets through drink specials, table tents, posters, bracket sheets and keychains, all with messaging to encourage college basketball fans to root for underdogs and drink Newcastle.The program featured distinctive point-of-sale elements including basketball-themed pole toppers, shelf wobblers, cooler decals and floor displays. The in-store display materials leveraged the brand’s “No Bollocks” tagline and personality as part of a larger social campaign.“The program is lock-step aligned with the brand’s honest, ‘No Bollocks’ approach to everything it does,” says Simpson. “We believe in getting through the bollocks to get to the heart of what is authentic, enjoyable and worth spending your money on. This will also be shared and promoted across Newcastle Brown Ale’s broad social channels.”The “Underdog” program was developed in collaboration between Heineken USA’s Newcastle brand and trade marketing teams and Newcastle’s agency, Geometry Global.

Newcastle Celebrates 'Underdog' Role

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