The digital marketplace has become a vital part of many bev-alc brands’ marketing and connection to consumers, and has an impact on both digital and brick-and-mortar sales.
Ruby Martinez, shopper marketing manager at Firestone Walker; Ethan Stienstra, co-founder of the E-Premise Group; Nichole Shustack, counsel for McDermott Will & Emery; and Paul Reiter, co-founder and CEO of Great Notion Brewing, shared the stage at Brewbound Live last month in Marina del Rey, California, to discuss the importance of digital strategy and best practices.
There are three key aspects of digital strategy that brands should be monitoring, according to Stienstra:
- The digital shelf, retailer’s digital inventory and consumer-facing assets that allow consumers to browse and shop online, including product photos and descriptions;
- SEO or the searchability of a brand and how easy it is to find on the internet;
- And social commerce, or the connection between a brand and its consumers that is fostered online.
Stienstra noted that the “best meetings” that the E-Premise Group has when working with a brand is with top sales associates and/or executives, national accounts leaders and marketing heads, and members of the team who should be leading digital strategy at a company.
“You’re going to need assets … so you need a marketing person to provide that information,” Stienstra said. “And then the sales guy is going to see how much business it’s going to bring in and he’s going to need to make some choices on investment.
“And then the national chain guy, he’s got to please the national chain account buyer,” he continued. “If he’s not looking good in that store, their brick-and-mortar business is gonna go away, because it’s that important to the off-premise retailers, this digital shelf.”
“More and more retailers, same as us, they want to be the go-to for the customer,” Martinez confirmed. “And what they’re investing in more and more now is online.”
Retailers are demanding more from bev-alc brands to help their own digital presence attract consumers, including making sure brands have up-to-date product photos and descriptions and digital marketing.
“We’ve been using it as an extension for our marketing arm, we have great marketing campaigns and the groceries are giving us that platform to leverage it and use it as another point of connection with the customer. Just that final, final touchpoint to put the product in the basket,” Martinez continued.
E-commerce has become “surprisingly a large part” of McDermott, Will and Emery’s practice, particularly as the industry tries to navigate the highly regulated bev-alc system that wasn’t necessarily created with the digital landscape in mind, Shustack said.
Shustack cautioned bev-alc suppliers entering the digital marketplace to learn about the third-party alcohol delivery platforms and digital retailers that they work with, as “they’re not all created equal,” and as regulations continue to be sorted out, suppliers need to protect themselves.
“Understanding the flow, understanding how it’s working, understanding how much effort they’re putting into the compliance is really important,” Shustack said. “And obviously, ultimately, having your contractual protections when you’re engaging with these platforms is really important.”
Knowing about the players in the space is also important as the digital marketplace is ever-evolving, with acquisitions and closings happening just like the physical world, seen as recently as this month, when Uber announced it would be shutting down Drizly, three years after acquiring the alcohol e-commerce delivery platform for $1.1 billion. Now many suppliers will have to shift their focus to Uber Eats.
Insiders can rewatch the full panel above, including comments from Reiter on what the digital space looks like from a craft brewery perspective, and why Great Notion has put so much focus on its social commerce.