Grolsch to capitalise on the visual experience as it looks to lift organic reach
Grolsch is hoping a new visually-led content direction on its online platform Canvas will help sustain the beer brand’s credibility and engage creative consumers.
The SABMiller-owned brand previously worked with Vice on the platform but realised that the long-form content being published wasn’t resonating with its target audience of young, urban professionals interested in art, design, fashion and music.
To change this Grolsch hired Nation – a design agency that created the original Canvas platform – to pivot the digital content hub into an engaging video and editorial platform aimed at urban creatives around the globe.
“Some of the stuff that Vice was doing was good but we need to switch it around and make it a lot more visual,” Nation founding partner and creative director Tom Kile-Hartshorn told The Drum. “We took over at the start of September, including all of Grolsch’s social channels, and the plan is to start making the whole platform more visually appealing, [publish] a lot more small chunks of content and not long form editorial which is what is was six months ago.”
“We have to make stuff more digestible and not write any articles over 500 words. We are also doing a lot more curation of other sources of news on the internet and posting that through our social channels. It’s a really interesting outlet for cultural stuff throughout the world,” he continued.
On the social side, Instagram forms the crux of Grolsch’s strategy with Nation mostly curating content from street artists, illustrators and designers to highlight interesting work that is relevant to the brand’s target audience. This follows Grolsch’s 400th anniversary campaign last year when it produced 400 different pieces of artwork in collaboration with a host of different creatives.
Interestingly, Grolsch has decided to shun running any paid media activity for Canvas, favouring instead an organic reach via social media posts across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. “There is no paid media plan at the moment which is good,” said Kile-Hartshorn. “We’re not trying to overtly advertise it. We are genuinely trying to build it into a place that is really interesting to people and it grows naturally. It’s having some nice exponential growth at the moment just because we are not constantly pumping out content through Facebook ads or sponsored Instagram posts, its gathering things into its own momentum really nicely.”
Grolsch is also hoping to build its YouTube following and will work with Nation to create a new series titled ‘Grolsch Presents’, where the brand will undertake studio visits with artists and designers to talk about their process and how they work, with the first videos set to roll out before Christmas.
The long-term goal for Canvas is to create a space where Grolsch has a voice outside of its brand-led campaigns – none of the content published is connected to the beer – and become a “portal for inspiration”.
“We are doing campaigns but at the same time rather than this hit and run attitude we understand now that we need to have a voice that isn’t just we make a TV ad and we put the TV ad on the internet…We have to have social channels and a platform that is publishing new things every day. The idea is to keep building the audience, targeting the right people, doing more video content and pushing more [people] on to our YouTube channel.
“The plan is to do a couple of videos a month and become a portal for inspiration and looking into what interesting artist and designers and musicians are doing around the world. The hope is that content is really compelling and help us push the brand in the right direction.”
Grolsch has also inked partnerships with DUS architects and jeans manufacturers Denham who will both work alongside the brand to create video campaigns over the next year to give viewers a unique look at the processes and mindsets of forward-thinking creatives.