At Pabst, I wore many hats. (And drank many beers). My daily tasks included overseeing organic social and community management, working cross-functionally with our AOR for all things regarding paid media + leading strategy on our DTC e-commerce store.
In managing PBR’s organic strategy, it was my job to connect with all other brand managers to make sure that social was supporting their initiatives. At Pabst, these initiatives could range from product launches to a deep look into their artist in-resident program at their DTLA-based art gallery to 30 localized concerts across the nation over the course of three months. And a plethora of things in between. (We built a 175oz Tall Boy, but I’ll get to that later).
In my first year we:
Increased following 65% vs. LY
Increased engagement rate per post 31% vs. LY
Increased earned impressions 492% vs. LY
Increased organic reach 1,000% vs. LY
Increased traffic to website from social 280% vs. LY
It was also vital to reconstruct the voice of ‘PBR.’ Pabst is a four star beer at a four star price and the brand’s tone needed a personality to reflect that. I developed, tweaked and actively used our Pabst voice while writing all social captions, email newsletters and in speaking as the brand in community management.
Beyond interacting with incredibly passionate fans, (you heard right - I promised a fan a hat, and he got a PBR tattooed on his leg), I also ran some social-specific one-off campaigns that were a pretty good time. I worked with the very fun (as their name implies) crew over at Party Land to get these done. We built THE Tallest Boy and maximized all 100 IG stories.
THE TALLEST BOY: To celebrate PBR’s 175th birthday, we made a 175oz can…..because….we could?
👀
Today’s the last day of 2019. We turned 175 this year. To celebrate, we made a 175oz Tall Boy. That’s almost a whole half-rack of tall boys in one can. Cheers to 175 years as YOUR beer 🍻
It’s been a ridiculous 175 years and we’ve got a 175oz Tall Boy to commemorate it. We did some crazy shit this past year – launched a ton of new products, sold 99 beers in one pack and even created a holiday. What shenanigans do you want us to get into next year?! We’re ready, tell us. 🎉
These were shared nearly 13,000 times via Instagram DM. And my New Year’s Day was spent breaking hearts across the nation, as there were only ever a pair of these Tall Boys made. Worth it though.
99 CAN INSTAGRAM STORY: We made a big box and we put 99 cans of beer in it. Pabst, to be exact. Needless to say, this box went viral. And we had to say something about it. With no assets ready and the box A FREAKING UNICORN to find…we decided to bring the box to our people by maximizing all 100 Instagram stories, each with their own individual beer cans. Yes, I manually uploaded 100 stories to the Pabst Blue Ribbon handle, every 3rd or 4th one with their own little spiffy line of copy (or merchandise deal).
These stories reached 1,844,331 people and garnered 2,297,851 impressions. And true life, I received 3,572 emails about a free shirt in response to Story #77 and we drove 1,553 (94% of them first-timers) to our merch store through IG story #43.
Combined with our feed posts to accompany these stories, we organically reached over 2m people.
(And I spent the next two weeks personally packaging and shipping free shirts to 500 lucky winners).
STORE.PABSTBLUERIBBON.COM
Alongside my duties managing organic/earned social and working with our AOR for our paid efforts, I also lead strategy on our merchandise store. It was more than logo junk - we sold some pretty cool stuff.
So far…
Increased sales 180% YoY from 2019-2020
Increased total sales 804% YTD
Increased conversion rate 86% YTD
Increased AOV 41% YTD
“Strategizing” included executing the product and promotional calendar, helping with product development, writing newsletter copy and styling/art directing seamless and lifestyle e-commerce shoots. A sliver of that work below:
