As a bunch of beer-loving weirdos known for their popular hop-forward and innovative craft brews, Lagunitas recently took their brew-mastery to the next level with the company’s newest beyond beer offering. For the launch of Disorderly TeaHouse, Lagunitas tapped Approach to position their sparkling hard tea as the “It” drink of Summer 2022.

SUCCESS STORY

How the brand behind the world’s #1 selling IPA brewed beyond beer and leveraged media and influencers to create buzz in a competitive new category

The Lagunitas Brewing Company started the craft beer revolution from a kitchen stove in Northern California back in 1993. Its innovative craft brews are now sold in more than 38 countries and the brand is well-known and well-loved for their culture - edgy brewing, fresh music, community, inclusivity, and of course, dogs.

The opportunity

Ready-to-drink alcohol products have disrupted the category and driven exponential growth in recent years. The Lagunitas’ innovation lab brewed up a RTD beyond beer option that would break through the seltzer clutter with a more premium malt offering. Disorderly TeaHouse is a hard, sparkling tea that features hand-harvested guayusa tea that's freshly brewed with natural fruit flavors. At just 100 calories, 0g sugar and gluten-free, the artisanal tea offers a better-for-you option at 5% ABV. To generate consumer awareness of the new product and increase distributor interest, the brand turned to Approach’s beverage public relations experts to help create demand in advance of summer occasions.   

The approach

Like Lagunitas, this campaign was anything but ordinary. With a short lead time, Approach developed a strategic plan for media and influencer engagement that included a launch event at the company’s Chicago TapRoom.   

Tactics Included:  

• A hybrid launch event with an IRL tasting experience for Chicago area media and influencers and an engaging virtual sampling event and demo for national media based elsewhere.   

• Influencer partnerships with Instagram tastemakers to create original DTH content, drive traffic to brand web site, and create compelling 3rd party social ad content for brand use in key markets 

• Targeted media efforts and attention-grabbing sample mailers to encourage trial, review and coverage consideration for seasonal stories around outdoor entertaining, summer holidays and best new drinks. 

• Distribution of a nationally syndicated lifestyle article featuring the brand to quickly shore up mass, local coverage and showcase the product to regional distributors 

• A weekly surprise & delight program for category micro-influencers to generate additional DTH social content throughout the campaign 

• Integration across teams to support and lift all of the brand’s marketing initiatives 

The impact

During the campaign, we introduced the brand as a key player in the beyond beer category with a hand-crafted, better for you hard tea.  

• More than 30 journalists received tasting kits, including The New York Times, Country Living, Delish, Elite Daily

• 14 Chicago media and influencers attended the IRL event to launch DTH

• Virtual event attendees included 11 key media from Rolling Stone, Today.com, Thrillist, Mashed, Food & Wine, Business Insider, Focus on Beer, The Alcohol Professor

• 50 influencers introduced the product to their followers with engaging social content

• Sponsored Instagram Stories drove 8,341 clicks to the brand web site, setting a new record for the most referral traffic of any partners in the brand's web site history

• A targeted surprise & delight effort generated nearly 1M earned social impressions for the new product