The job market for young adults these days is notoriously difficult - the unemployment rate for recent college grads is rising year-over-year and is actually higher than that of the average job seeker (DATA SOURCE). So, Natural Light sought out to launch a campaign centered around finding a summer internship, a relatable issue to our young, 21+ consumer who recently or is about to graduate. The campaign needed to be authentic to Natty and garner earned media attention by doing what Natty does best, which is helping to solve the difficult “adulting” problems that are top of mind for our fan community.
Natty uses social listening and consumer data, inside of its fan community and outside of it, to understand what issues are most relevant and more importantly, how they discuss them. We saw that finding an internship was a broad trend amongst our target demo, but discovered within our community, that being “under-qualified” was a big source of anxiety.
Armed with this insight, we knew we had to flip the description of the traditional candidate on it’s head to hit home with our fans. Young Natty fans value making epic memories outside of the classroom, and if that means a 3.75 instead of a 4.0 GPA, so be it. The Natty Light fan is someone whose creativity can be applied to both writing an English essay, but also throwing campus’ best theme party of the semester on a shoestring budget.
Leveraging our insight, Natural Light set to create a media strategy that uniquely positioned our summer internship program in a way that bucked the trend of asking for candidates to meet seemingly impossible standards. We landed a light-hearted “recruitment video” as the vehicle to launch the campaign and put our own spin on the corny, robotic corporate recruiting film.
To make the video as authentic as possible, the main character in the content is the actual Natural Light brand manager, the person who would hire and manage the intern. Due to the uniqueness of having the real-life Natty Light brand manager, opposed to an actor, we knew this tactic would be compelling for media.
He is a great representative of the brand, our voice on social and a perfect fit to effectively communicate the need to hire an intern that’s “Natty Qualified” (e.g. someone who cares about hard work, has an impressive resume, but more importantly, is a high quality, creative human being who would passionately advocate for Natty every day). Strategically positioning this as an atypical internship looking for an atypical candidate, and creating the buzzword, “Natty Qualified,” spearheaded the media strategy and immediately attracted editors.
Shot in our “high-end DIY” style, the video was simple, funny and effective. It was set in the real Anheuser-Busch office in NYC, conveying real information about the internship and application process, with some hilarious bits that showcased how Natty injects fun into everyday scenarios that the rest of the world takes too seriously,
Ahead of launch day, the media strategy led with embargo pitching to top consumer lifestyle, and food & beverage outlets such as Thrillist, Delish and Food & Wine. This tactic was to work with media ahead of launch, assist with any needed content, interviews, details, etc., and ensure coverage, and the right messaging, went live as soon as embargo was lifted.
The embargo strategy ultimately led to a snowball of mass coverage across men’s and women’s lifestyle, news, business, trade, real-word advice, and local media in all of the key markets for Natty. Interestingly, the unique positioning of this internship, along with the media strategy, led to Natural Light being covered by media it had never gotten before, such as Inc., Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and Men’s Health.
A hero piece of coverage that resulted in mass earned buzz was the Delish placement which was secured via a new found relationship established during our Naturday’s campaign (See Naturdays entry for context). In addition to including the recruitment video, it hit on all of the key messages, highlighting and defining “Natty-Qualified,” quotes from the brand manager, roles/responsibilities for the intern, and a link for readers to apply for the position. This Delish story was than pushed across their Facebook page reaching over 20M+ people, and Twitter reaching 50.3K followers.
This Delish piece of coverage resulted in direct syndication on Esquire, Men’s Health, Yahoo! Lifestyle, and Country Living.
226 PR placements and 540M+ PR impressions across editorial, broadcast and social coverage
More than 12,000 resumes received, the most ever for a job posting on Indeed.com
100% positive sentiment
Nearly 70% of coverage included the Natty Intern recruitment video
Top coverage:
https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/natural-light-internship-2019
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/natty-light-searching-summer-intern-163000723.html
https://www.delish.com/food-news/a27420344/natty-light-summer-intern/
https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/drinks/a27425374/natty-light-summer-intern/
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2019/05/10/beer-intern-wanted-natty-light-will-pay-you-to-drink-beer/
https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/natural-light-interns-drink-beer-hiring
https://www.inc.com/dan-whateley/unique-summer-internships-marketing-savvy.html
https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a27432514/natty-light-summer-intern/
Press release:
