Key Learnings from the Rebel 100 Brand Activation

Last week I had the pleasure of working for the soft launch of the Kyle Busch 108 Single Barrel Bourbon that led up to his NASCAR race at Circuit of the Americas. It was an awesome experience working with the Rebel Bourbon team and brand ambassadors that had people stunned that a 100 proof bottle of bourbon could taste so smooth, me included.

I had never worked with such a large team before and I must admit I really enjoyed the professionalism and whole experience as much as I hope the customers who bought their engraved Rebel Bourbon did. We worked five different locations from San Antonio to Austin and the team consisted of the following:

• A car show driver in charge of bringing and setting up a replica of Kyle Busch’s number 8 NASCAR.

• Two Brand Ambassadors in charge of setting up the displays, both inside the store and the tent outside next to the car, with swag and talking to customers about the bourbon’s characteristics.

• Two more Brand Ambassadors dedicated to giving samples of the bourbon at the set up inside the store.

• A major brand manager from Rebel Bourbon, the kind that is so knowledgable about bourbon you’d think they would have an official title like Bourbon Sommelier.

• An engraver, me, in charge of personalizing every bottle that is purchased during the three hour brand activation at each location.

I ended up learning a couple of things during this event and will give a break down of those things I found most impactful.

First and foremost, the location the brand activation is positioned in store has an incredible effect on the amount of customers it will interact with. When our set up was directly in front of the doors as you walked into the store, the interactions were seamless and the Brand Ambassadors hardly had to put in any effort to attract customers. If the set up was off to the side of the entrance, the success of the activation lay squarely on the effort the Brand Ambassadors were willing to put in.

Here is an anecdotal story about what I mean. In San Antonio we were at a Specs that had no highway exit due to construction so foot traffic was low, on top of that the activation was in an aisle off to the side about 10 to 15 feet away from the main aisle, but the Brand Ambassadors there had a “bubbly” attitude and called out to many of the customers that would have walked by and never noticed the activation. This resulted in a decent turnout given everything going against this particular location. By contrast, in Austin, with different Brand Ambassadors, in a similar situation but much closer to the entrance, with about the same amount of foot traffic, the event didn’t do as well as the San Antonio event because the extra effort of calling out to customers unaware of the setup wasn’t there.

Secondly, I noticed a difference in customer interest when Brand Ambassadors mentioned the opportunity of getting a bottle engraved when they were first interacting with customers as opposed to not mentioning anything about the engraving until after the sampling was done. When customers heard about the engraving as they were sampling and that the bottle could be given as a gift, customers were more prone to purchase a bottle. This gave the customers two reasons to buy. They could either buy a bottle because they liked the bourbon or they could buy a bottle even if they don’t like bourbon because gifting someone and engraved bottle is a heck of a gift to give.

All in all, I’d give this experience a 10 out of 10 and would do again.