Swamp Head Brewery's "got 99 problems, but good beer ain't one."

Swamp Head Brewery was founded in 2008 and prides itself on being Inherently Floridian. They started up in Gainesville, and make their love for Florida apparent in their logo, brand, and mission to be "Florida's brewery." The short bio description I used in the blog post title was found on Swamp Head Brewery’s twitter page. I love it because it's a great attention-grabber for those who have never been exposed to the brand - it shows a little attitude, helps tell their story, and includes a reason for people to follow their account. This is just one example of how I find them to be successful in using multimedia communications to reach their customers.

The three things that I really appreciate about Swamp Head Brewery are how they focus on telling their story, they work to keep fans up to date on their social media platforms, and focus their energy on the local Gainesville community. Their website not only shares their story, staff and upcoming events, but also includes ongoing promotions, tasting room selections, and photos (posted by company AND customers). They've realized that is a starting point to inform the consumer and they immediately make it known that the company can be followed on social media with one-click widgets on their homepage (see below). 

 

In terms of social media, Swamp Head creates lots of opportunity for dialogue and the tone and voice of their messaging highlights their passion for the brewery and its products. You cannot mistake having reached their company/business pages because they use the cover photo function to keep their pages consistent with their website. They often use the platforms to promote new products and share across platforms by linking to their social media accounts within posts. This makes it very easy for people to follow them on their preferred platform (or all of them).  

Swamp Head understands the importance of making sure posts show up in people’s feeds, letting people get involved in their story and communicating with them one-on-one.  They share great content like pictures and videos from the Brewery, messages about brewing beer, notifications about events (on and off premise), and local community events that they’re involved in. The 5th Annual Taste of Gainesville post below showcases their official beer sponsorship. 

Swamp Head's marketing department is obviously doing their job very, very well. Not only has the company expanded to selling merchandise like t-shirts, hats, and frisbees, but you can find their craft brews served in bars and restaurants across the state of Florida. They are doing so well for themselves in fact, that they are looking to relocate and double in size. A lot of this has to deal with Swamp Head's online presence via social media platforms, as it's consistent with their goals and brand. Their approach is interactive and entertaining,  and they understand "it takes a village" and its involvement to get their brand recognized as Florida's brewery.

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Direction of Communication and Scope

Direction of Communication

In discussing the aspect of direction of communication, classic marketing is unidirectional. This means information and brand awareness is spread actively from the company to a passive audience. I would say classic marketing was appropriate when the messages highlighted the most commonly demanded goods to the largest common denominator of consumers via mass media like TV, radio, newspaper, and billboards. Marketers targeted specific demographics and reached a large audience in doing so. To rely solely on unidirectional marketing in this day and age, though, would be a marketing fail.

 

On the other hand, the new, social way of marketing can expect the best benefits of promotion and exchange of dialogue. Both the company and customers actively talk and listen to one another. There is a plethora of pros to social marketing, but here are two I deem most important:

1. It's where the brand's consumers are - the average person spends at least 23 minutes per day on Facebook, giving the brand optimized ad placement based on their preferences and psychographics.

2. Social media presents an opportunity for a degree of personalization, thus creating involvement and relevance, not just awareness (See Mass Marketing vs. Personalization infographic here on Social Media Today).

 

 

Campaigns have proven to be more effective when they include multimedia and multi-channels. With participatory channels, influence becomes more powerful than reach (Young, 2010). Classic marketing is better than social when traditional marketing channels are able to create especially memorable and emotional occasions with a brand and integrate tools of social media to create dialogue. This works well because it has the potential to lead to viral marketing. Direction of communication refers to social marketing channels like Facebook and Twitter where consumers spend most of their time and are prone to sharing "likes" of particular brands, organizations, and customer service experiences with their network of friends and fans. 

 

Scope

Classic marketing and social media marketing both want to gain market share for a product or service. The classic approach is smaller in scope, only because the bigger the audience you want to reach, the more it costs. Classic marketing allows for delivering to large audiences, measured by demographics that advertisers bought. This is noted with the product or service sale, but engagement ends there. In this way, I believe classic to be better than social.

 

Social is accessible by anyone regardless of their location. The downfall is you lose targeting. According to the reading from Mitch Joel's The World is Changing has Changed, the average post from a Facebook brand page only reaches 16% of its fans. So trying to reach a certain demographic may prove to be difficult.

 

A social media marketing campaign can be just as successful as its classic counterpart if it has knowledge of demographics from their users. Without it, there's only opportunity for the brand to target by content behavior and response (Young, 2010). Social marketing allows for more interaction with the brand since the consumer is digitally-enabled and connected. The consumers' appetite for information and entertainment grows exponentially, as the focus now shifts from markets and products to the brand's customers, their relationships and interaction over time. Although sharing an opinion of the product or service becomes as easy as a like or re-tweet button, the social model demands much more than what's normally included in marketing.

 

A brand's marketing campaign will retain its competitive edge by raising awareness via classic marketing and then engaging their audience through their social media platforms.

 

Source:

Bennett, S. (2013, December 1). Facebook Vs Twitter: Revenue, Users, Average Time Spent, Key Mobile Data [STATS]. - AllTwitter.
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/facebook-vs-twitter-data-stats_b51335

Jones, M. (2013, May 13). Mass Marketing vs One-to-One Personalization [INFOGRAPHIC]. RSS.
http://socialmediatoday.com/martinjones/1452891/mass-marketing-vs-one-one-personalization-infographic

Stone, J. J. (2014, February 26). Social Media vs. Classic Marketing - We teach you how to start your own business in 60 days. We teach you how to start your own business in 60 days.
http://60daymba.com/social-media-vs-classic-marketing/

Young, A. (2010). Brand Media Strategy: Integrated Communications Planning in the Digital Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Allow me to introduce myself...

My name is Tiffani Stephenson and I'm so happy to be here with all of you for my first semester!

A little bit about myself - I'm originally from New Jersey, moved to Orlando with my family in 2003, and graduated from University of Florida in 2012. My Bachelor's degree is in Recreation, Parks, and Tourism, with a specialization in Event Management. Gainesville seems to have sucked me in and won't let go, as I still live here and work for the UF Performing Arts as Event Coordinator for the Baughman Center and Phillips Center. Currently, as Baughman Center manager, I'm actively working to re-market and re-brand our venue to UF students and the surrounding Gainesville community in an effort to increase the number of rental events held here annually. I firmly believe that with applying what I learn while pursuing this degree, we'll finally create a solid social media presence and get the exposure the Baughman Center so rightfully deserves. (To those of you in the area - come by and see us! It's the prettiest place on campus!)

My experience with social media includes running a Facebook and Twitter page while I was Resident Director for a local student housing community. They acted as participative outlets for resident retention. That was my first taste of connecting event management and social media marketing. In the last year, my dad decided to start a small baking business, and I’ve been named as his Brand Systems Consultant. As such, I’ve assisted him in developing an overall brand strategy, package design, pricing, placement, advertising campaigns and customer service messaging. I’m especially excited because I see there a few classmates who run their own businesses, and I’ll be able make strategic applications IRL.

Those of you who have added me recently, you may have noticed that my current Facebook page is pretty bare. During my last semester at UF, I decided to deactivate my personal Facebook because I was suffering from “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO) syndrome. Yes, research tells me this is a real thing! It has changed drastically since the last time I logged in, but I’m anxious to dive right back in to work with all of you.

When I’m not working (or doing homework now), I practice yoga or play with the cutest puppy in my world, Tobias!

 I can’t wait to see how the summer unfolds. Cheers to a great semester and Go Gators!

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