How BrewDog got Peter Crouch to vouch for Laout

The brief

Moving into lager meant taking on the establishment with its deep pockets and decades of familiarity. From these challenges Craft defined three core objectives for BrewDog.

They needed to drive brand appraisal among those who don’t know BrewDog very well. To showcase BrewDog’s quality credentials with products at the center. And to activate trials among new audiences in spaces they can win in.

Without the budget to compete with ‘big beer’ their focus was on finding the right platform for the brand to be heard and seen. So when they heard that Peter Crouch’s podcast was leaving the BBC to join Acast, they saw this as the perfect opportunity to bring their strategic positioning to life through a detailed content approach.

Hear what the winners had to say about their award-winning work above.

The idea

Craft with BrewDog took the first-ever commercial partnership with That Peter Crouch Podcast, providing full access to Peter Crouch and his crew.

As a podcast with over a million listeners, they were able to identify it had a low index of existing BrewDog drinkers but was loved by lager drinkers. This was their platform to not just sponsor a show with some generic creds, but to go to town on creating the best content partnership possible.

As the first-ever commercial partner for the podcast they had to make sure their approach and content were genuine, and that it would feel familiar and on-brand for the show and their listeners. It had to be as far away from sounding like a boring advertising feature as possible.

Their starting point was to design the broad content narrative for the series; from the conception of Laout to recipes, taste tests, and the marketing to the launch party, all with a focus on listener advocacy and involvement.

While each episode went out as a podcast, it was also recorded and uploaded to YouTube, and supported organically on Twitter by the hosts and the show’s official accounts. As the campaign developed, the listeners shared the campaign, without needing any encouragement, fuelled by honest and playful conversations between Peter Crouch, BrewDog and the listeners.

The results

By creating fun, honest and engaging content BrewDog managed to gain brand awareness and get people talking, and not just reach audiences.

Campaign results (source Acast)

• 14% increase in prompted brand awareness for Brewdog (Acast benchmark 10%)
• 29% increase in consideration for BrewDog (Acast’s benchmark 12%)
• Laout organically trended on Twitter in the UK
• The organic Laout launch posts got 915k impressions alone

Listener Engagement (Source: Lococo/Craft research)

• 78% of the exposed audience loved the content that BrewDog x TPCP created stating that this type of content was specifically something that appealed to them.
• 68% of the exposed audience agreed that the TPCP and BrewDog content made them more likely to buy BrewDog in the future.
• 53% of those who were exposed to the campaign also recalled seeing people they follow online talking about the campaign.

This campaign was a winner at The Drum Awards for Content 2022. You can see all the winners here. The Drum Awards for Marketing are currently open for entry. Find out how you can enter now.