Hughes Public Relations, Adelaide

Projects

• SEA Gas
• The Marina Hindmarsh Island

Capital Raising

• Petratherm
• Clean Seas Tuna Limited

Digital

• St Patrick's College
• Cool Rules
• Aussie BBQ Legends
• Crowne Plaza 'Tweet Yourself'
• Beerenberg

Community Engagement

• Red Nose Day for SIDS and Kids
• South Eastern Professional Fisherman’s Association

Issues Management

• Harris Scarfe
• Transitions Optical
• Nippy's
• Sabco
• Kingston Estate Wines

Brand Building

• Crowne Plaza
• Harris Scarfe
• Urban Pacific
• Harbour Town
• Beerenberg

Health

Events

• Shorts Film Festival
• Canunda Wind Farm
• Adelaide Motor Show
• Solar Cities Congress
• BankSA

Business-to-Business

• BankSA Business Focus
• San Remo

Beerenberg
Coopers Ales Barbeque Sauce.

The Situation. In 2007 two of Australia’s iconic family companies joined forces to bottle the ingredients for the world’s greatest barbeques – beer and sauce.

Beerenberg Coopers Ale Barbeque Sauce is the result of a unique collaboration between one of the country’s best known brewers, Coopers Brewery, and sixth generation sauce and jam producer, Beerenberg Farm. Beerenberg Farm required the support of a professional PR company to develop a communication strategy to establish Beerenberg Coopers Ale Barbeque Sauce as Australia’s only true blue, home grown barbeque sauce and to generate average weekly sales of six bottles per store.

Objectives. Hughes Public Relations commenced work with Beerenberg Farm in January, 2005, with a brief to raise the profile of the Beerenberg brand and achieve specific campaign objectives including increasing sales leads, raising brand allegiance and customer awareness of Beerenberg products, and creating new retail and wholesale distribution opportunities in the domestic market.

Partly as a result of the strategic advice provided and significant media coverage generated for Beerenberg across Australia, the family-owned company’s products have won shelf space in major retailers nationally. “Pull-through” of these products through advertising has been cost-prohibitive, with the company adopting a PR-led marketing strategy to build Beerenberg’s brand attributes and maximise marketing impact within a limited budget.

The Beerenberg Coopers Ale Barbeque Sauce was seen as a key product for Beerenberg and one which could be leveraged to achieve the company’s communication objectives and raise awareness of the Beerenberg brand across Australia in a cost-effective manner.

Elements. Implementation of the communications strategy consisted of the following key elements:

• Pre-awareness raising of the Beerenberg brand and its products through targeted media product drops;
• Trade launch at Fine Foods Sydney on 24-27 September 2007;
• Consumer Launch at Tasting Australia, Adelaide on 13-14 October;
• Media Launch in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide;
• Media publicity campaign: limited magazine advertising.

Pre-awareness: Prior to the launch of the Beerenberg Coopers Ale Barbeque Sauce a product drop was undertaken, with one product and a letter unfolding the Beerenberg story, delivered to key food writers every two weeks over a period of two months.

Trade Launch: The trade launch took place at the Fine Foods event held in Sydney. A barbeque was held at the event with food served with the Beerenberg Coopers Ale Barbeque Sauce as a sampling opportunity. Managing Director Anthony Paech was personally involved in the event.

Consumer Launch: This took place at the Tasting Australia event held on the banks of the River Torrens in Adelaide. More than 20,000 people visited the event held over the weekend of 13-14 October 2007. This represented a great opportunity for Beerenberg to enable as many people as possible to sample its new product which was served with a hotdog at the event.

Media Launch: The media launches took place in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide on October 15, 16 and 25, 2007. All launches were held over a gourmet barbecue lunch where the Beerenberg Coopers Ale Barbeque Sauce was served to influential food writers and news journalists representing some of Australia’s most widely ready magazines, newspapers and television food shows. Anthony Paech, Managing Director of Beerenberg, gave an overview of the company and the product at each launch and guests were able to try the sauce over lunch as well as take a bottle away for later sampling. Coopers Brewery managing director Tim Cooper attended the Adelaide event.