Magners Selling Over Facebook
Another alcohol brand is tending to use social media for selling instead of only promoting.
The C&C Group’s Magners cider announced it will become the first alcoholic drink brand to be sold via Facebook.
The first a limited-edition run of Magners Specials gift packs will be sold for £10 including UK delivery. The gifts will include a bottle of each of the three flavours the range launched in August pear and ginger, spiced apple & honey and spiced apple & rhubarb plus a bottle opener and a booklet. The ciders carry a £2.25 price tag in-store.
The Magners announcement comes days after Diageo unveiled it steps up into a multi-million dollar partnership with Facebook to join business planning. More about partnership between Diageo and Facebook read here.
Diageo’s study revealed that its five brands increased 20% in sales as a result of Facebook activity. Diageo’s brands collective fan base grew from 3.5 million to 12 million in the past 12 months and Smirnoff is now the number one beverage alcohol brand on Facebook worldwide.
As Diageo, Magners will also use Facebook as their sales channel, and with over 6K of fans they intent to raise the awareness of Specials.
“F-commerce is in the very early stages, so at the moment it is simply a great way to increase offline sales by driving trial,” said marketing head Kirsty Hunter. “In years to come, however, we may see more consumers making their purchases in this way.”
On the other hand, industry experts seem not to be happy with the concept of alcohol being sold online. Claire Nuttall, Insight and Innovation Director at 1HQ, comments on the infinitive “It is frightening to think selling alcohol via Facebook would be possible with such extensive youth traffic regularly using Facebook. There would surely be uproar amongst parents with young children and lobbying groups that the right policing has not been put in place to prevent underage children buying alcohol more easily.”
Nevertheless, the problem could be selling liquors for minors, but Magners says that they had prevented it by controlling age gate with the payment portal that would only accept payment by credit card.
With the help of Aurasma app, which use image recognition, the brand has also launched a national press and food magazine campaign, and the app will activate interactive content when users place their smartphone over the ad.
The brand has also launched a national press and food magazine campaign using smartphone image recognition app Aurasma, which will activate interactive content when users place their phone over the ad. The first a limited-edition run of Magners Specials gift packs will be sold for £10 including UK delivery.
As for me concerning, people are more likely to go in a drink store and buy a bottle of any liquor, than ordering over internet, and waiting delivery. But, as a promotion, all innovations like these are really functioning.
