Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) had been using national television commercials and on-site print collateral to drive performance for its beer brands, but the company did not have a method to reach potential customers at the right time and place with a clear brand message to drive foot traffic to its local Points of Consumption (POC), a decentralized network of independent retailers, bars, and restaurants.
To deploy a global-to-local strategy successfully for AB InBev, Tiger Pistol needed a means to reach their locations easily and quickly to onboard them into the local program. To facilitate location sign up, we added a new Platform feature allowing a sales rep to onboard an end-location to receive campaigns from AB InBev. With just a hyperlink and a 30-minute training, every sales rep for AB InBev was enabled to onboard locations to the campaign program in under 5 minutes.
For the program, AB InBev outlined the following objectives:
- Ensure interests and offers were targeted to and for relevant consumers
- Implement strong calls-to-action, including “Get Directions” to drive foot traffic
- Ensure the use of quality, on-brand creative in-line with national marketing efforts
Tiger Pistol and AB InBev also outlined the following goals:
- Engagement with a decentralized network of independent businesses (POCs) that pour/sell AB InBev’s beer brands
- Implement hyper-local dynamic targeting specific to each business sales area
- Allow for advertising creative that’s on-brand and can be personalized for each POC
- Gain the ability to provide relevant campaign results to both brand and POC
Post-onboarding, Tiger Pistol’s platform could enable AB InBev with a simple, effective way for their POCs to automatically publish relevant, on-brand, best-practice Facebook ads straight from the local POC Facebook Business Page. This was achieved by addressing campaign objectives and goals.
Objectives
1. Ensuring interests and offers were targeted to and for relevant consumers
- Potential customers for a sports bar may not be the same potential customers as the steakhouse across the street. Tiger Pistol’s technology and strategy accounted for this with dynamic copy and creative. The Platform can deliver the steakhouse a campaign about pairing the beverage brand’s drinks with its menu options, while the sports bar receives a campaign about enjoying drinks while watching the game.
2. Implementing strong calls-to-action, including “Get Directions” to drive foot traffic
- In a decentralized model, proving value to the local store is paramount. Even if the ads are provided free of charge, the creative focused on AB InBev’s products. To provide value to the individual POC operator, the campaign would need to clearly be built around driving consumers to their location specifically. The Platform distributed campaigns to POCs with their unique business address tied to the ‘Get Directions’ Call-to-Action button, in addition to dynamic copy that references their store name and encourages users to visit.
3. Ensuring use of quality, on-brand creative in-line with national marketing efforts
- AB InBev needed to ensure the local ads were aligned to their broader messaging strategy. All the unique considerations for the POCs, and their personal branding and locales, still needed to roll up into a unified campaign framework. The dynamism and scalability of the Platform made this simple, with easy-to-use campaign templates, that “localize” themselves dynamically by marrying local data with brand controlled configuration.
Goals
1. Engagement with a decentralized network of independent businesses (POCs) that pour/sell AB InBev beer brands
- Tiger Pistol built an app allowing sales reps to onboard POC owners locally within 5 minutes, creating accounts and providing Facebook Business Page access.
2. Implement hyper-local dynamic targeting specific to each business sales area
- Tiger Pistol technology automatically validates each POC’s address when they onboard, checking for sufficient potential reach and deploying ads to the relevant local area.
3. Allow for advertising creative that’s on-brand and can be personalized for each POC
- Tiger Pistol utilizes dynamic copy fields, a selectable media library of AB InBev brand-approved assets, and the ability to publish from the individual POC’s Facebook and Instagram Business Pages tied to their local address.
4. Gain the ability to provide relevant campaign results to both brand and POC
- Every POC can access a personalized dashboard with real-time campaign results, plus, for corporate stakeholders, the Tiger Pistol Platform provides aggregate reporting across campaign metrics and market-sales volume.
AB InBev previously focused their massive advertising budget on corporate-level campaigns. After using Tiger Pistol’s platform, the company was able to compare spend on national campaigns versus the local campaigns.
Through Tiger Pistol’s Platform, AB InBev scaled its social advertising, distributing brand-approved campaigns to thousands of restaurants and bars worldwide, reaching more than 710,000 consumers per POC and bridging the existing gap between broadcast and on-site print collateral, driving foot-traffic to individual local restaurants and bars resulting in increased sales.
Additional Results:
- +50 Net Promoter Score among bars and restaurants that participated in program
- ~710K Average Reach per POC
- 60% Lower CPMs (cost-per-thousand-impressions) compared to client’s national brand efforts
- 350 Million impressions delivered over a two-month period
- Cost-effective, targeted social ads removed the need for expensive influencers
- Time-savings, as POCs were easily on-boarded with Tiger Pistol’s efficient onboarding features
- Training time, Helpdesk time, and cost savings, as Tiger Pistol provided global support to local POCs around the world
- Increased brand sentiment through local activation: by building multiple points for feedback from POCs to the brands within the tool, Tiger Pistol helped AB InBev better align on goals with their POCs.
The net result of achieving AB InBev’s goals is not only a lower cost of delivery compared to advertising the same products nationally, but also happier business owners and managers, as the real story of the global-to-local play is that it brings the local business owner into the fold. The local restaurant chain’s general manager or the local sports bar owner can see the benefits of a scaled marketing campaign in real-time - benefits that are powered by global agency support, with high quality creative, and execution.
