DRINKS PR AGENCY
A thirst for fame.
Nexus works with some of the UK’s leading drinks and lifestyle brands to deliver 360-degree Drinks PR strategies across trade media, consumer news, business titles, digital media, podcasts, influencers, social, national and international broadcast platforms. Underpinning our PR approach are two core drivers – relevance and originality; we call this EARN IT. thinking.
Our expertise extends through the beverage supply chain, from production, manufacturing, packaging, brand development, category management, new beverage categories, on-trade hospitality, foodservice, wholesaling and retailing. This gives Nexus a unique understanding of the complex challenges faced by drinks businesses and how media relations can transform perception, embed trust with target media and influence key decision makers.
Just a few of what we do.
Introduction
Nexus’ partnership with Sovereign Brands is a good example of our capability to deliver brand awareness of cult spirit brand Bumbu Rum to increase growth and listings. Here we manage communication plans across on-trade media, retail trade media, wholesale media, independent retail media, as well as executing activity that travels across social media. We develop relevant branded partnerships with paid influencers, targeted influencer kits for unpaid influencers and create content that has true social currency.
The work we do regularly sees our clients featured by respected branded media such as Sky News, BBC World Service, The Guardian, Telegraph, LadBible and GQ magazine. It also drives significant organic traction across social and influencer channels. And, importantly after 40 years, our relationships with key B2B media titles such as The Grocer, The Spirits Business, The Drinks Business, Decanter, Harper’s Wine & Spirit, Pub & Bar, The Caterer, Marketing Week and Campaign Magazine are unrivalled. Trade media remains exceptionally influential to drive listings, and as a research source for national journalists. Our “Don’t melt David” activation for Tenzing natural energy drink cut through across nationals and trade to secure a long-desired listing meeting with Waitrose.
Understanding Drinks PR?
Drinks PR is about generating trusted awareness. It’s about putting brands in the conversation not making an announcement. It helps to build reputations with consumers and command listings with retailers, hospitality operators, and wholesalers. It’s also essential for brands to drive mass consumer discovery across, print, digital and broadcast. Drinks PR delivers endorsement to target audiences through trusted media titles and respected voices highly efficiently.
Reaching consumers before they shop is essential to drive on shelf recall and be sought out on shopping lists. News, influencer coverage and original creative is a highly cost-effective way of doing this. Most beverage products across soft drinks and alcoholic drinks are sold through physical stores. In 2023, the total drinks trade industry in the UK was worth £72.7bn and challenger brands are worth a massive £2.6bn[1].
Why Drink Brands Choose Nexus
Public relations is essential for drinks brands to perform in an increasingly competitive environment. Nexus deploys a wide range of communication strategies including powerful creative strategy, brand activations, product placement, original research, data led press releases, founder stories, , business and financial stories, creative campaigns, reactive commentary, media training, internal communications programs, media events, brand partnership, influencer campaigns and crisis management.
The Nexus team helps you uncover the most relevant brand angle, craft the right messages and build relationships with the right journalists. It is critical to ensure that whether a business announcement, product launch, CSR initiative, colleague strategy or creative campaign, your business is positioned correctly with the media.
Core Elements of Effective Drinks PR
PR delivers real commercial growth and cost-effective brand awareness. It opens customer doors, makes your business a “go-to” for influential journalists and gives consumers confidence in you as a trusted producer, manufacturer, hospitality venue, or retailer.
But why is PR essential for drink brands? Good media relations drives discovery, SEO authority and deeper emotional relationships with decision makers and consumers through brand building. The power of endorsement from a trusted third party can have game changing significance.
However, public relations is bigger than media relations, it is a way of thinking that aims to drive conversation about your brand and make it relevant to culture. Our full service approach to earned media means that we look to explode ideas and initiatives across several channels – from influencers, brand ambassadors, impact advertising, experiential activations and brand partnerships. We craft compelling narratives and creative campaigns to engage with key drinks media and influencers and utilise digital platforms including social media channels like Instagram to engage with the primary audience for the brand’s brief.
Challenges and Solutions in Drinks PR
One of the challenges brands face when allocating budget to drink PR is demonstrating return on investment. Today, we can measure PR effectiveness very accurately through soft and hard digital metrics. Media weighting, news brand site traffic volumes and social reach are all crucial – not all coverage is equal. We have a detailed understanding of which digital news brands persuade audiences – this helps drive efficiency and strategy development. In addition, journalist opinion although anecdotal tends to closely reflect audience sentiment.
Harder metrics such as increases in branded search are also very important. We can identify the relationship between coverage and people seeking the brand out. Direct website hits also show how powerful EARN IT. strategies and PR can be in getting consumers to engage with a business. Our work with plant-based milk Glebe Farm resulted in 33m earned reach due to editorial coverage across national, consumer and trade publications and platforms, and led to a top-tier wholesale listing.
To drive online reach and “click ability” Nexus deploys a wide range of digital content and communication strategies including powerful product placement, customer case studies, original research, data led press releases, founder stories, business and financial stories, creative campaigns, reactive commentary, media training, internal communications programmes and crisis management.
Trust is the most powerful emotional connection a brand can have with a consumer; effective public relations is the key to building it. This extends more broadly to digital now, with channels like LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok crucial for strong PR strategies.
A digital PR strategy cuts across creating powerful website content, your company social profiles, the social profiles of individuals and the leadership team within the business, search and online news.
Emerging Trends in Drink PR
The drinks category is diverse and not only stretches across the supply chain, but also across the SKU and formats. The category has seen a sharp increase in Ready-to-Drink formats and according to IWSR, RTD products will command 8% of Total Beverage Alcohol by 2025. Seltzer has dominated the spotlight overseas when it comes to RTD, led by the success of cult brand White Claw. Despite the success in the US, hard seltzers haven’t had the same impact in the UK as value sales have fallen 17.6%.
NoLo (no and low alcohol) beverage options have increased significantly across on-trade hospitality venues and off-trade retailers. Brands are already appealing to the 41% of buyers who want to see more premium NoLo options by launching lower proof spirits. RTDs have relatively low ABVs of 4-6%, which stand them in good stead for the growing numbers of sober curious, specifically the younger demographics like Gen Z. The interest in moderate drinking is expected to grow by 34% in 2024, continuing its reach beyond Dry Jan and Sober October so low ABV RTDs are well placed to maximise this upward trend.
Collaborating with influencers
Full service PR goes way beyond a press release. Our expertise in engaging with professional content creators means our programmes extend across journalists, experts and influencers.
However, the influencer data available is much more detailed than that available from branded news. This is very important for establishing the right influencer collaborations. To identify the right partners, we review hard metrics like audience location, engagement rates and average impressions over a three to six month period.
And, equally important – the softer factors that contextualise a brand fit. These can be factors such as historic brand partnerships, quality and style of content or even their influence amongst other creators.
Influencers are about more than data – this is how PR agencies differ from influencer only agencies. Nexus understands the wider implications of brand associations giving us a distinct advantage over conventional influencer marketing agencies and platforms.
Measuring the Impact of Your Drinks PR campaign
PR success depends on your business objectives. Effective Drinks PR is about understanding a drink brand’s objectives and developing an EARN IT. strategy to deliver on those ambitions. These objectives can range from building awareness, driving online sales, building reputation to attract investment, engaging with the community to futureproof your workforce, or taking employee engagement to the next level.
It’s important for a drinks business briefing an agency to have clear objectives that go beyond coverage and link to their commercial and cultural ambitions.
There are widely used industry metrics in Drinks PR which tend to be reach and the controversial advertising value equivalent (AVE). Both rely on published data from news brands themselves and the latter on an equation that calculates the equivalent exposure of a media buy in that publication. Arguably this ignores the cultural weight of a journalist over an advert.
There are other data driven ways to measure the impact of Drink PR. Primary brand tracking, typically a survey of 1,000 consumers asking if and where they have heard about you, can be useful if you are a more established brand having to make more complex marketing channel spend decisions. Brand tracking can also explore the emotional response consumers have to your brand.
Alternatively, hard digital metrics like branded and unbranded SEO, website impressions, back links, online sales aligned to reviews, coverage volume and google content rankings, also play an important role in demonstrating the value of Drinks PR and EARN IT. strategies. This means a greater likelihood of securing budget and showing investors, the board or the wider business the impact Drinks PR can have.
Case Study: A Successful Drinks PR Campaign
We developed and launched “Get your G.O.A.T on”, a campaign designed to drive social currency and news for Bumbu rum. To celebrate “being your own G.O.A.T” we opened a pop-up tattoo parlour at renowned Femme Fatale offering free Bumbu-inspired tattoos to its most devoted fans by celebrity tattoo artist and TV star Grace Neutral.
The event was hosted by credible and influencer DJs including DJ Sian (BBC 1Xtra) and DJ Henriie (Kiss FM), with the Bumbu portfolio served in shots and cocktails.
To support the campaign, we secured a stream of national coverage through an always-on press office and implemented a creative influencer strategy to turn relevant creators into our advocates. The campaign earned 183m reach and 43 media articles across key national media titles and achieved a 3m social reach across leading drink and lifestyle influencers across the campaign.
FAUSTINO: IN IN IS THE NEW OUT OUT
The challenge briefed to Nexus to support Faustino in raising grocery distribution and increase market share from competitors while getting wine drinkers to trade up in a category dominated by one major player, meant we needed to build Faustino’s reputation as the trusted aspirational wine brand at the centre of shareable moments.
We developed insight into habits and gaps at dinner parties and the trend of hosting friends at home instead of going out. Using this, we created the ultimate ‘in in’ dining experience hosted by Faustino and provided tips to media and influencers. We also created ‘in in’ kits for influencers to create their own dining experience at home.
The campaign earned 30.3m reach and 23 media articles across key national media titles with 41 posts from leading drink and lifestyle influencers during the campaign.
HARDY’S: LAUNCHING A NEW BRAND PLATFORM
The Nexus brief was to demonstrate category leadership and communicate a new brand strategy. We developed a media strategy to help launch Hardys’ new global brand platform to the trade. We organised a media event reflecting the platform to engage media and customers where we unveiled the new platform. Hardys’ heritage and quality credentials were the core message, also reflected in the venue, the British Library. A VR game replicated the buying experience fostering some healthy competition amongst guests. 100% of gold tier media attendees covered the launch within 24 hours and achieved a 600k media reach across key drinks trade media.
Conclusion
PR is an increasingly important channel for drink and lifestyle brands. It can deliver greater future demand for its products or services often more efficiently pound for pound than paid strategies.
Drinks PR can be measured very efficiently using a blend of soft and hard trackable metrics. This trackability is partly driven by the consumption of online news and branded content delivered by influencers through platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
Nexus’ 40-year experience across the beverage category including soft drinks and alcoholic drinks, means that it is well positioned to support brands and categories at different stages of growth. Our EARN IT. PR strategies, built off relevance and originality, have catapulted brands to category leadership within 12 to 24 months, and in the long term have helped build the most well-respected food quality marks in the world.
Bumbu rum and Faustino are both good examples of how Nexus can deliver highly effective Drinks PR influencer and creative campaigns, social and overall brand strategy and crisis management for both emerging and established drinks and lifestyle brands.
Our approach to making brands more relevant and original to achieve their commercial objectives with compelling campaigns and a consistent presence in highly trusted branded media such as Sky News, BBC World Service, The Guardian, Telegraph, LadBible and GQ magazine as well as influential B2B media titles such as The Grocer, The Spirits Business, The Drinks Business, Decanter, Harper’s Wine & Spirit, Pub & Bar, The Caterer, Marketing Week and Campaign Magazine are unrivalled.
1 Nielsen IQ presentation, Bread and Jam: Cheers Summit!