In chapter 13 of Share This, Rob Brown brings up an example of how companies can use alternative ways to promote their brand through their own channel. He describes how “Fosters,” an Australian lager brand, developed its own comedy channel using famous comedians. This comedy channel attracted serious viewership, and therefore increased the company’s brand awareness without Fosters having to place expensive ads on mainstream television networks.
This is smart, especially if you have the right idea and people (like Fosters did). However, I believe that the real reason for this method’s effectiveness can be tied back to an idea found in Forrester Research Company’s Groundswell.
In Groundswell, the idea of tapping into the social technographics profile of a company’s customer base is key. By doing this, a company can gain a better sense of how to effectively use media to reach their customers, based on what kind of technologies and habits the customer has.
Because Fosters is a lager company, they likely advertise to adults and mature teenagers. By doing a comedy series with recognizable adult comedy figures (as well as some comedians from older television shows), Fosters is appealing to an adult audience.
Other beer brands like Dos Equis have done things similar to this through YouTube and television. Dos Equis created a series of commercials that glorified the brand’s logo-man, detailing his adventures with a catchy hint of dry, adult humor. This advertising, especially when broadcast on YouTube, was made by using other figures to help increase their brand awareness.
Sometimes, talking heads from the company itself will not make for an appealing advertisement. Spending money on recognizable figures to advertise your product, and also spending time to create a platform that will be unique to your product (such as Fosters’s comedy channel), can be an effective way to advertise without having to spend an outrageous amount of money on mainstream television marketing.
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