Matilda Bay’s Second Favourite Beer Promotion disrupted the usual path to purchase in bottle shops and pubs across Australia, with eye-catching displays featuring custom prizes from our competitors, instead of from us. Customers could redeem prizes as a gift with purchase or through an online draw when they bought our beer, instead of their usual favourite.

Every touchpoint of this campaign was designed to jolt customers out of autopilot during their purchase journey, and enter our promotion. From shelf wobblers next to competitor beers in bottle shops, to tap talkers in pubs, to paid media driving drinkers into participating venues.

In the Australian beer market, three heritage brands - VB, Carlton, and Great Northern - dominate, with histories spanning decades, even centuries.

These brands aren't just the most popular beers nationally and by state; they are celebrated cultural icons. It’s common to see Aussies proudly wearing branded merch, getting tattoos of logos or even building shrines in their shed.

Any new entrant to the lager category has to navigate not just a preference for taste, but a landscape where changing your choice of beer is akin to changing your identity.

Despite this enduring brand affinity, the rise of craft beer in Australia is capturing the curiosity of lager drinkers who might occasionally feel like something different. This interest gave Matilda Bay craft brewery a prime chance to launch a gateway craft lager in a way that both respects tradition and offers an alternative.

Situation: Staying in the craft beer category wasn’t helping Matilda Bay brewery grow. By launching its all-new Hazy Lager, it set out to penetrate the mainstream beer market — and get its new beer into the hands of as many Aussie lager drinkers as possible. But, this market was already dominated by three iconic lager brands (VB, Carlton and Great Northern) and their deeply loyal fans.

Brief: Research showed Hazy Lager performed great on taste. We knew once people tried it, they'd keep drinking it. So our brief became getting them to take that first sip.

Our objectives were twofold:

1. Get staunchly loyal drinkers to switch from their usual beer

2. Reach this mainstream audience with a small, craft beer budget.

To achieve it, we needed a bold, disruptive idea that would work hardest where drinkers switch and try new beers: the final 3 feet of purchase.

Australians are deeply loyal to their favourite beers. They don’t just drink them, they proudly wear branded merch, get tattoos of logos, even build shrines in their sheds.

To drive trial of its new Hazy Lager, Matilda Bay decided not to compete with Aussies favourite beers, but instead, help them love their favourite beers even more.

By ordering Hazy Lager, Aussies could walk away with epic prizes from competitors’ brands, like a VB massage chair, a Carlton Dry hot tub, Great Northern fishing kits, Carlton Draught fridges, snowboards, surfboards, BBQs, and many more – all created, built and sourced by Matilda Bay themselves.

This selfless self promotion ran in 200+ pubs and bottle shops — supported by OOH, digital & in-store activations, driving huge results for Hazy Lager.

Staying in the craft beer category wasn’t helping Matilda Bay brewery grow. By launching its all-new Hazy Lager, it set out to penetrate the mainstream beer market.

Yet, this market was already dominated by three iconic brands (VB, Carlton and Great Northern) and their deeply loyal fans. Our target audience doesn’t just drink their favourite beers, they proudly wear branded merch, get tattoos of logos, even build shrines in their sheds.

So, instead of trying to change their behaviour, with our nonexistent brand awareness and a tiny media budget, we decided to weaponise our audience's love for their favourite mainstream lager brands, targeting them in the final 3ft of purchase.

By ordering Hazy Lager at a pub or bottle shop, Aussies could walk away with epic custom-made prizes from competitors’. A boldly subversive way to incentivise trial.

Using competitor sales data, we showed up wherever Aussies were drinking these beers.

Our selfless self-promotion activated in 208 bottle shops and pubs across Australia, for 8 weeks – with 4,000+ prizes valued up to $5,000 each.

We worked with competitors to create and source each prize, ensuring fan appeal. Using competitor sales data, we distributed prizes to match consumer preferences at particular venues.

When consumers went to purchase their usual beer, they were met with eye-catching displays featuring epic custom-prizes from competitors.

Point-of-sale called consumers to purchase Hazy Lager to enter. By doing so, they could either take a prize from the display itself, or scan a QR-code to enter an instant-win draw.

Every touchpoint disrupted path to purchase – from shelf wobblers next to competitor beers, to tap talkers in pubs, to paid media driving drinkers into venues.

On social, we turned our Instagram turned into a prize gallery, and even recruited our competitors' superfans to spread the word.

The campaign achieved huge results in terms of both trial and distribution of Hazy Lager:

+160% increase in Hazy Lager sales per bottle shop

+45% more kegs of Hazy Lager in pubs

+48% uplift of orders in stockists

Some venues even received massive +550% growth in Hazy Lager sales.

This was a +139% improvement on previous Matilda Bay product launches, making it the most successful product launch in their history.

These figures indicate that Matilda Bay successfully carved out a space in the seemingly impenetrable mainstream lager market, full of loyalists who rarely drink anything other than their favourite beer.

In total, we gave away 4,150 prizes across 208 venues nationwide.