Chris Taylor, director of the beverage management program in the University of Houston Conrad N. Hilton College of Global Hospitality Leadership, watched in awe as sales of White Claw skyrocketed seemingly overnight in the summer of 2019.
As a new entry in the relatively unknown hard seltzer category, it was completely unexpected and had virtually nothing to do with the company’s own marketing strategy. White Claw’s rapid success was due, almost entirely, to a social media influencer.
“He came up with a slogan, ‘ain’t no laws when you’re drinking Claws’, and it took off from there,” said Taylor, a Hilton College associate professor. “The last thing a company wants is their alcoholic product associated with law breaking, but it started selling out everywhere.”
The influencer, with millions of followers, flooded social airwaves with the slogan, even putting it on T-shirts. It created a fervor for a product that wasn’t on the radar of the beverage industry at all. Demand went through the roof and soon White Claw was selling out everywhere.
Taylor had never seen anything like it. Neither had anyone else, for that matter. He, along with Hilton College researchers Cortney Norris and Scott Taylor Jr., set out to research and explain this new phenomenon they dubbed “rogue marketing.”
According to the researchers, rogue marketing occurs when an unaffiliated individual creates and posts an informal message about a brand on social media that becomes viral.
But… how to make anything “go viral” is the challenge. And a report about a product can be negative as well as positive.
From phys.org October 5, 2022 by Bryan Luhn, University of Houston