Ole Smoky Distillery boosts ad recall 21 points with Facebook campaign

Brief:

Ole Smoky Distillery, the first federally licensed distillery in eastern Tennessee, boosted brand awareness with a Facebook campaign targeted at people ages 21 to 34 in Southeastern and Midwestern states. The promotion used mobile-first video and photo ads that showed how Ole Smoky moonshine can help get parties started, according to a case study shared with Mobile Marketer.
The distillery saw a 21-point lift in ad recall (2.7 times higher than the average CPG benchmark), a 12-point lift in brand awareness, (3.2 times higher) and a 6-point lift in purchase consideration (3.3 times higher) during the two-month campaign that ran from November 2017 to January 2018.
Ad agency VaynerMedia helped Ole Smoky with the campaign, whose goal was to urge people to order or buy the distiller's products at local retailers, restaurants and bars. They designed the ads to tell the brand story in the Facebook and Instagram apps without requiring the audience to click through to its website.

Insight:

Ole Smoky's mobile marketing campaign indicates the power of targeting ads to key audiences through platforms they're already familiar with, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of its media spend. Facebook has almost unrivaled power to target ads, considering its audience reach and how much the company knows about its users' demographic characteristics, personal interests, relationships and viewing preferences.

Ole Smoky is among the liquor brands that have added mobile campaigns on social media to target key customers. D'ussé cognac this year partnered with on-demand alcohol delivery service Saucey and e-commerce platform Boost to let people order using special hashtags on social media or SMS. Pernod Ricard's Glenlivet distillery worked with music identification app Shazam to create an augmented reality experience and promote a limited-edition whisky called The Glenlivet Code.

At the same time, Alcohol brands must be careful when deploying social media campaigns to avoid run-ins with federal regulators and officials in many states. Last year, California's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) fined Heineken USA for running a social media campaign that offered mobile coupons people could redeem for free beer. The ABC had warned Heineken against running the campaign, which the regulators considered an illegal marketing scheme. Recording artist DJ Khaled in April retreated from social media posts featuring liquor brands after complaints from watchdog groups alleged the content wasn't properly labeled as advertising and reached minors.