Short's Beer Comes Up Short in Social Media Monitoring

Written By: Bill Morgan

It’s been a hot summer week.  The mind often wanders toward cold beer.  So naturally, I decided to monitor the Michigan craft beer company called Short’s Brewing Company.  

I plugged a handful of variations on the Short’s name (i.e., Shorts Beer, Shorts Brewing, Shorts Brewing Company, etc.) into the required tracing tools and added the SocialMention tool after reading about it in a class post.  Watching for five days has been like watching the grass grow.  I have to admit that I’m a bit disappointed in the results. 

But first, a little background about Short’s Beer, to help set the stage.

Founded in 2004 in Bellaire, Michigan by Joe Short, Short’s beer has quickly developed a following for those who like beer that is often bursting with flavor.  The brewpub added an Elk Rapids bottling plant in 2008 and now distributes both bottled and keg beer throughout the state, including a number of drinking establishments in the East Lansing area.  (I know this because I had to do some research on the product in order to properly write this paper.) Short’s updated its original website in 2009 and has accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.

The reason I’m disappointed in the monitoring results is that I was not able to find many mentions of Short’s Beer through the online tracking tools.  On the surface, Trackr identified more than 100 mentions over the past 12 months, which isn’t bad until I discovered that the vast majority of mentions were a result of the sloppy tracking algorithm that liked to include mentions for “[film] shorts [about] beer” and “[people wearing] shorts [while drinking] beer” in addition to “shorts beer.”

A handful of people did mention that they planned to be or were in the process of drinking shorts beer.  On July 2nd a beer blogger posted a very positive review after visiting Short’s in Bellaire.  Here’s a sample of what she said:

This is my absolute most favorite brewery that I’ve ever been to. It’s a hands down winner all the way around. This is the kind of brewery that has it all: fantastic beer, great atmosphere, & great food… We refer to visiting their brewery as making a pilgrimage, which we are fortunate to do a couple of times a year. If you are anywhere near Bellaire, MI, this is a must-drink!

Another blogger reviewed a flavor of Short’s back in January as part his “365 beers in 365 days” blog.  While not quite as gushing as the July blog post, this review put a positive spin on the tasting.

So I really had no idea what style of beer this was before I bought it. I made it a mission to buy every shorts beer I could get a hold of when I was in MI. Not that I am against fruit beers, but I don’t go out of my way to drink them. Overall I was pleasantly surprised with this one being that fruit beer isn’t my favorite. Clean fresh cut berry smell, and the taste was similar; strong strawberry taste with a raspberry/blackberry tinge…  Grade: B+

Finally, it appears that the boys at Short’s brewed some bad beer and elected to come clean and Do The Right Thing via both traditional media (press release) and social media (website, YouTube, Facebook, etc.)  Here’s a bit of a post from an Online Beer Expert on the matter.

In case you missed this earlier in February, Short’s Brewing company had some beer go bad in the field. Like any good company (Hey Toyota – take notes) they immediately apologized and offered options to their customers to rectify the situation. In addition to this, they made a nice little video showing the punishment everyone at the brewery received for allowing this to happen…  

Click Here to View Short Short's Video

Short’s get’s Social Media and Crisis Communications brownie points on this “Oops, We Shipped Some Nasty Beer” because they:
1)   Immediately and publicly pleaded guilty for selling a bad product
2)   Sincerely asked for forgiveness, offering a variety of ways to make it right for their customers
3)   Explained how they were taking to steps to make sure this wouldn’t happen again
4)   Posted a semi-funny video on YouTube about the matter (it’s just beer, after all, not rocket surgery)
5)   Bonus: A beer industry expert favorably compared Short’s product recall to Toyota’s problems!

Given these positive examples, Shorts still comes up short when it comes to social media.  For example, here’s their scorecard from one online tracker:

Social Mention analytics: Shorts Beer
1% strength (the likelihood that brand is being discussed in social media)
24% passion (the likelihood that those talking about brand will do it repeatedly)
10:1 sentiment (the ratio of positive mentions to negative mentions)
8% reach (a measure of the range of influence)

Four Things Shorts Beer Can Do to Have a Higher Profile on Social Media

1)  Start running some fun promotions, in keeping with Short’s fun brand personality.  David Tryder at Dunkin’ Donuts has just two rules for his online campaigns: make them fun and make them cheap.  He focuses on promos that help turn real people into celebrities.  He’s started an annual online-only create-the-next-donut contest that drew almost 3 million entries this year.  Short’s could try something similar with a create-the-next-beer content.  Coffee Mocha Stout, anyone?

2)  Remember: “It’s not about the beer, it’s about drinking the beer.”  Recent market research in beer marketing indicates that what’s important to beer drinkers isn’t so much the product or packaging but the bonding or social context during consumption.  My advice to Short’s is to go easy on the new brew introduction announcements (Tweets, press releases, etc.) and instead focus on social events, their friendly beer servers and drinking clubs.  Social media can help facilitate the social experience.

3)  Fix your product name before it’s too late!  Short, Shorts, Short’s, Short's Brewing Company, SBC – what is it!?  Just because the name your lawyers filed “Short’s Brewing Company” as your legal name doesn’t mean you have to use it as your URL.  Lands’ End became distinctive when they elected to allow a printing typo become their permanent name.  My counsel is to shift everything to the short and simple “Shorts Beer.”  (The URL is still available!)  Used consistently (on Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, your website, etc.), this can only help to improve search engine recognition and social media sharing and support.

4)  Hire a marketing and social media pro to help get the job done.  One of the tricky things about social media is that it needs be thoughtful and timely.  The trouble is that the time demands of social media on a small business owner go up at the same time their business demands go up.  Beer drinking is highest during the warm months of summer, when Joe Short is likely up to his leder hosen in beer bottles.  This leaves very little time for working on social media updates and interactions during the brand-building summer months.  As a result, Short’s posts new videos in the winter, when beer interest is at a low point.  Not good marketing, just a small business reality.  Therefore, invest in marketing expertise and free up Joe’s time to create more great beer.

Enough of this social media tracking – it’s time to enjoy a cold Short’s beer!

Footnote: Short's doesn't enable video viewers to embed its YouTube code.  If they did, I'd be able to promote the video linked above right in my post instead of as a link.