Question

Pick a local brand (from your city, region, or country) that has been very successful competing against bigger global brands in its product category

• Explore and determine if the local brand you picked has a well-defined and executed brand strategy?
• What are the elements of the local brand strategy that enabled it to achieve this success?

Answer 1

Shiner Bock is a Texas craft beer that competes with global brands like AB Inbev. It has a well-defined brand strategy that focuses on localness, tradition, craftsmanship, and quality. It has been a leader in the craft brew space for many years and in 2019 AB Inbev started a focused campaign to compete directly for that business where “Shiner Bock represented 93 percent of sales” . Shiner’s response was to use the local historic themes in Texas to fight the attempt to take their market share such as references to the war for Texas independence. Local businesses rallied behind the smaller local craft beer company and stopped stocking AB Inbev products. Shiner television advertisements that I have personally seen focus on the brewmasters being local citizens and the brewery being a staple and major employer of the small town where it is produced. The Spoetzl brewery where Shiner Bock is brewed gives tours regularly (Connect, n.d.). The craft beer company does advertise at major music festivals in Austin, Texas with international participation by sponsoring stages and sessions with artists (Connect, n.d.). Shiner Bock has and continues to win many brewing awards locally and internationally backing its claims of being high quality and distributed internationally. Shiner Bock has been successfully and consistently marketed as a traditional beer produced in the same manner for over a century. They have created line extensions to expand the beer line with seasonal varietals and regularly produced variations. They have a developed presence on social media and sponsor local events like runs and community biking events