Background

When people in the US think of Continental, they either think of a defunct airline, or a tire manufacturer. Tires are a big part of Continental’s industrial portfolio, but raising awareness of their full line of products falls on the shoulders of Continental’s regional sales teams.

Every year, they make face-to-face sales calls with hundreds of distributors to build relationships and provide education about the benefits of Continental’s entire portfolio. However, with the nation in lockdown,these visits were no longer possible. And with supply chain issues compounding the crisis, there was a real threat of losing customers to competitors.

Continental needed a campaign that could effectively replace in-person sales visits and retain valuable business.

Creative idea

We packed all our industrial products portfolio sales info, into a beer, and turned it our b2b brochure.

Continental’s 150th anniversary gave us a great reason to reach out to our top distributors. But instead of another Zoom call or a mailed-in brochure, we reached out with an irresistible proposition – to crack open a can of beer!

With that, the beer brochure was born. Not only was the German-American lager delicious, it was printed with a QR code that took distributors to a custom landing page inviting them to learn about the breadth of Continental’s industrial portfolio, through the life of a beer from the field to the can.

Throughout the experience, Continental’s tires, belts, and hoses were prominently featured, with a final prompt to reach out and raise a beer with the local sales rep.

Strategy

Salespeople have long relied on the business building power of making deals over a cold one. Clinking two beer glasses together does what a Zoom call simply cannot replicate.

For Continental,beer is also the perfect analogy for their industrial portfolio. From the agricultural tires that the harvesting machinery runs on, to the belts and hoses that transport ingredients through each stage of brewing, to the truck tires that help deliver the cans to stores, Continental’s portfolio is critical.

The combination of Continental’s German-American heritage, the story of their industrial portfolio, and the attention-grabbing power of raising a drink, all came together in a unique celebration of Continental’s 150th anniversary with the beer brochure!

Our target demographic of distributors was the perfect audience for this game-changing approach.

Over 12,000 cans of beer were brewed and made their way out to over 500 of Continental’s top distributors.

Cases were sent in October, to coincide with key decision-making time frames for our distributors. A QR-code on each can of beer not only educated distributors on the entire industrial portfolio, but also acted as a dealer locator, so customers to get in touch and discuss orders and cross-category purchases.

This strong call to action was critical in replacing the face-to-face visits to which distributors are accustomed.

Results

At a time when supply chain issues threatened customer retention, the beer brochure resulted in a 97% retention rate.

Not only that, distributors who received the brochure grew their net sales by 28.4% versus those who did not at 6.5%.

Additionally, in-campaign distributors increased unit orders by 6.5%, while those distributors who were not in the campaign declined unit orders in the same time-period. This might have had something to do with not only the ingenuity of the beer brochure, but also the fact that the beer tasted great, garnering a score of 4.5 out of 5 on a beer rating website