Vote For Your Favorite Pale Ale

Awesome concept, but failure on execution and experience.

I bought a beer sampler today from Southern Tier Brewing Company. I’ve had their IPA before and enjoyed it, so I thought I would try the sampler. When I opened the box I found a flyer asking me to vote for my “Favorite Pale Ale.” My first thought was “oh, cool” but I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. I didn’t know if they were competing against other breweries (and were pandering for votes) or if it was an internal initiative to connect with their customers.

The url on the flyer pointed me to the Southern Tier Brewing Company website, so I figured it was an internal initiative, which got me excited. I think its great when companies reach out to their consumers for their opinion even if its just for a taste test. I looked up the website to see what was going on. Long story short: great idea with poor execution.

Let’s take a deeper look.

It looks like they introducing a new Pale Ale and looking for feedback on their recipe variations. Here’s an excerpt from their website:

If you’ve opened a 12 bottle Pack of Pales, you have noticed we’re running a special promotion: VOTE for your FAVORITE PALE ALE. We’re testing a few different recipies of our new Pale Ale, and we want your opinion. As an incentive, once you’ve cast your vote, you’ll be granted 10% off your next purchse from our online store!

Very cool idea. Instead of spinning their wheels internally about the recipe. The have their initial ideas and are putting it out in the world with an established vehicle to collect data and iterate on the product design (recipe). I commend them for their concept, and putting something out in the world that may not yet be optimal. However, it all comes down to execution of the concept and the manifest user experience.

Have you figured out what happens next? They have created and distributed 6 batches (or variations) on their Pale Ale recipe and are looking for feedback from their customers about which batch is preferred. Awesome. Right?! Not so fast.

There are several problems with how this concept was executed, which definitely impacted my overall “experience.”

Limited Access

First, I assumed they would have packed several of the batches into the sampler pack I purchased. When I checked the batch numbers on the back labels it turns out they are all from batch 212. What?! How am I supposed to vote for my favorite, if I only get to sample the same batch 3 times. If they intentionally include only one batch per 12 bottle sampler pack, then I would at minimum have to purchase six 12 pack to be able to try all of the batches (and I don’t feel comfortable voting for my favorite if I haven’t sampled them all). I say at minimum, because it seems this offer is only available on the variety packs, which are sealed. So there is no way to know, prior to purchase, which batches (or batch) will be included in the pack. I think its pretty unlikely that I am going to buy enough of their sampler packs to be able to make a fair evaluation of all of the batches.

If Southern Tier Brewing Co. wants to send me a sample of each of the batches, I would be more than happy to do a tasting and report the findings here.

A few other issues as well as opportunities to change the current experience with this campaign.

Website Design

Okay, here is a really minor issue with the submission form. The instructions say “press the corresponding check box in the form below.” but they are using radio buttons and not check boxes. Regardless, the instructions should say something like “Select your favorite batch number” or “select the winning batch number” or something like this that doesn’t reference the specific form mechanism.

Missing the Why’s

As Dan Formosa points out in his recent article Why Marketing Research Makes Us Cringe in Interactions Magazine, they should be asking consumers to do more than just indicate their preferences. Southern Tier is missing out on a huge opportunity to query their customers about why they likes the beer they selected. What is it about the beer that they like, what makes it compelling, what attributes are significant and which are meaningless. This is a missed opportunity to connect more deeply with their customers than just having them fill out a form indicator preference.

Creating a Dialog with Customers

Maybe even more important than the missed opportunity to collect richer data (and based on how they have structured access to all the batches, I would be surprised if anyone who submits a form on their website really tasted all the beers), they are missing an opportunity to connect with their consumers and create a dialog. They have brought people (me for example) to their website through this promotion, but they are only collected information. They aren’t opening up and talking to people. They aren’t connecting. They aren’t really listening (they’re harvesting).

Similarly, Southern Tier doesn’t appear to have a twitter account. A quick search reveals that people are in fact tweeting about their company, but there is no indication that they are listening to this free feedback. Dell is a great example of what truly listening to your customers via twitter can do for a company.

There’s also no end date to the promotion. Again, the acquisition structure they have created takes some time to complete, so it would helpful to know how long I have to sample these beers before they decide which recipe they are going to go with.

Bottle Design

On a positive note. I do like their beer (I haven’t tried the batch 212 yet pictured above), and I really like the label for their new Pale Ale.

However, it’s interesting to note that all four of the bottles don’t match each other in terms of graphic style or brand standards. They aren’t, in appearance, a unified suite of products. It would be difficult to tell at-a-glance that these four bottles are from the same company.

Conclusions

So, Southern Tier Brewing Company was able to initially get me excited about the concept and their brand, but the execution of the concept yielded a bad experience that now makes me think less of their brand than I did before I purchased the initial 12 pack of beer. If they are a savvy company, they will have mechanisms in place to discover posts like this and respond positively.

Hello?! Southern Tier Brewing Company. Are you listening? You make some tasty beers, but you could seriously improve your customer relationships through better service design and more thoughtful engagements.

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