2024 Gold Social Media

Agency: T&Pm

Client: Hawkstone

Entry Title: Skyrocketing Hawkstone sales on social

Executive Summary

As a small Cotswold brewery up against iconic brands with global scale, the team had a challenge to make Hawkstone front of mind at Christmas. With tiny budgets and limited resources, they needed an idea entertaining enough to cut through organically and capable of creating awareness, engagement as well as sales.

Strategy

Hawkstone is a young challenger in one of the most competitive categories. Squeezed between corporate giants and trendy craft brewers, to cut through and make money during Christmas, the D2C brand needed to maximise the gifting opportunity - and had set triple-figure growth targets.

Devising a social campaign would reach a broad gifting audience. But budgets were £5k for production and a £10k boosting budget in a market where nearest competitor spent £7m on media alone.

Hawkstone has something no other beer brand has: its outspoken ambassador, Jeremy Clarkson. Although great for likes, social performance had shown his persona alone doesn’t guarantee reach or sales. Investing in humour in the same way that others may invest in media would give the best chance of beating the algorithm and delivering impact far beyond the budget.

Creativity

Social's classic Christmas advent calendar concept seemed the perfect seasonal trope to make our own. Launched on November 28th with a video on Instagram, the message was simple: shop on Hawkstone.com between now and Christmas, and you’ll automatically be entered into the daily advent giveaway. The prizes were suitably ‘unique’: basically old tat from Jeremy’s farm - some straw, an old welly, a chipped mug and an egg. Funny, original and unexpected, the competition was an instant hit.

While the competition captured existing fans’ attention, to win new eyeballs and drive incremental sales, it added a truly shareable star prize. On December 1st, Jeremy announced he’d be adding another barn find to the prize draw, his dusty and dinged-up Jeep Wrangler from The Grand Tour Colombia Special. The Jeep announcement went instantly viral, kick-starting a month of frenzied social activity, national press coverage and a very busy sales period.

The beauty of the advent calendar concept was its simplicity. It took a tried-and-tested performance tactic and spun it in a way that was uniquely on-brand, but crucially, allowed the brand to flex into new audiences. The simple purchase-to-entry mechanic kept the barrier to entry relatively low and an Instagram shop facilitated immediate purchase.

Results

The campaign delivered 18.7 million organic impressions on Instagram. With 350,000 followers at the time, that represents a reach rate of nearly 200% versus an 8% benchmark. In total it delivered 22 million organic impressions and 1.7 million engagements.

With a social performance score of 100%, the brand ranked number one and outperformed eight of its competitors. YouGov brand tracking further supports the brand-building value of the campaign. Ad awareness increased two points, with consideration score trebling. Word-of-mouth exposure and positive impression both saw a huge spike, increasing 1.5 points and 1.3 points, respectively. This translated into sales with organic social outperforming all other channels, driving 36% of web sessions, up 346% year-on-year.

Sales were £91,000, an ROI of 1,520% on the production budget. Ultimately, the campaign contributed to a whopping 515% increase in year-on-year revenue.

The Team

T&Pm - Ines O'Gorman, Content & Social Strategy Director - Tom Sutton, Head of &Accelerate - Paul Leake, Copywriter - Tahnee Hadfield, Account Manager - Jim Bolton, Creative Director, Alexander Czapski, Media Executive - Matt Nixon, Strategy Partner T&Pm

Hawkstone - Johnny Hornby, Founder - Jonas Munk, COO