Sapporo Brews New Beers

Sapporo Brews New Beers — And New Customers — With Social And Marketing Cloud Ingredients
MAY 26, 2016 @ 05:30 AM
by- Aaron Lazenby, Oracle

In Japan, the word “Sapporo” is synonymous with beer history.

Toward the close of the 1800s—not long after the end of many centuries of isolation from the rest of the world—Japan fell in love with beer. In 1876, demand for this novel beverage led to the creation of Japan’s brewing industry and the opening of the country’s first industrial brewery in the northern capital of Sapporo. The Hokkaido Kaitakushi Beer Brewery established the oldest beer brand in the island nation, today named after the city where it was founded and known for its gold-star label.

Sapporo Premium LightBut Sapporo Breweries’ firsts didn’t stop with the suds themselves. In May 2011, Sapporo was the first Japanese beer brand to establish a presence on Facebook. This foray into social media marked a significant transformation of marketing strategy at the company, changing the organization and refocusing tactics around direct, personal interaction with customers. Today, social and content marketing efforts are delivering results: driving new revenue for the company, giving product development new insights into the market, and building relationships with beer fans in a whole new way.

Built for Digital

While Sapporo Breweries was smart for being the first Japanese company in its sector to move to Facebook, the organization—at that point—was not designed for this new era of marketing. According to Mitsutaka Kudo, general manager of the company’s digital marketing section, Sapporo Breweries’ corporate culture encourages innovation. So several divisions of the company started experimenting with Facebook at around the same time. While these uncoordinated efforts clearly revealed the efficacy of social tactics, they also introduced inefficiency and duplication of effort as multiple social marketing initiatives appeared across the organization.

“We didn’t have any standard rules regarding social media,” says Kudo. “So we gathered all the staff who were working on social media efforts and transformed them into our new digital media department.”

Sapporo Brews New Beers

Full article- forbes.com

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