More PR Karma for Pabst

You’ve probably heard the news that Pabst Brewing Company is for sale.  It’s actually been for sale for about 10 years now, but this time it sounds like Uncle Sam is serious about them having to sell.

But this  potentially awkward story has turned into a beautiful word-of-mouth opportunity for the company.  And the best part is that they’re not even doing anything to facilitate this – at least that’s visible to me.

A couple ad agencies, namely Forza Migliozzi have launched a website called buyabeercompany.com and are accepting fake donations to round-up the $300 million the experts expect to be the selling price.

People can “pledge” money to the account and the website will keep a running tally of how much “the people” have pulled together to buy the company.

This seems to keep happening for Pabst?  Going back to my time with the company, we seemed to get a boost of organic PR every couple of months.  Remember the PBR fraternity at Oregon State?  What about the PBR casket? Why does Pabst get so much organic PR?

I call it PR karma… when it comes to publicity, you make your own luck.  The modern day PBR (and consequently, Pabst Brewing Company) is a brand that’s built on word-of-mouth marketing, which in turn, is street cred.  Consumers flat-out love the brand and are attracted to interact with it.  The results are interesting stories that are created by real people – and that’s the best kind isn’t it?

A 1000 Little Pictures, A 1000 Little Conversations

Gary Vaynerchuk makes a great point here about the effectiveness of mass marketing vs. conversational marketing.  In this case he argues that telling stories about your brand on a daily basis is more effective than blasting out a generic press release and hoping that it gets covered.

The part I like the most is when he’s talking about “painting a thousand little pictures”.  For me, these little pictures are also conversations.  By interacting with consumers on a daily basis, you’re planting the seeds of PR.  Journalists today don’t need press releases.  They have Google, Twitter, Facebook and REAL people to tell them what the stories are.  They don’t need (or believe) BS press releases that pound their inbox everyday.

Instead of taking the short cut and *hoping* that a journalist will buy what you’re selling on press release, go out make it real and make them *want* to write about your brand.

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