Making fans by creating a community

Making fans by creating a community
Talking Points - Maes

Joss Davidge, Business Director of brand experience agency BEcause, continues his weekly search for great marketing ideas. 

This week he has spotted an interesting campaign from Belgian beer brand Maes that seemed to get everyone talking.
 
In Belgium, Maes is the second most popular beer brand as well as the third most common surname.

Armed with a desire to be number one, and leaning on the idea you can always depend on your family in times of need, the beer brand launched this brilliantly witty lead generation campaign.

It offered a free barrel of Maes beer to every person called Maes in Belgium.

This kind of generosity was always going to get people talking, but the brand harnessed those conversations by having the right mechanisms in place. Fundamentally, it created a community where there was none through a well-crafted online strategy. That is by no means an easy task and a stroke of genius as they made it seem natural leveraging something so personal without making it feel contrived.
 
Consumers were encouraged to engage with the brand through a bespoke app and to be active members of the Facebook and Twitter communities. The Maes-centric free-barrel events also provided fresh content that was widely shared between friends. Maes claims that its number of Facebook fans trebled in one day and over half a million people downloaded the bespoke Maes app.
 
This is a great example of how a brand can develop a real connection with consumers by giving them an experience that they are going to want to share and talk about.
 
Read more from Joss Davidge in our Clubhouse.

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