How do you save the planet, boost your brand caché, win category buzz for the week and come out looking like a straight-up innovator? Look at Carlsberg for the answers.
Last week, the global brewer headquartered in Denmark announced they would be abandoning plastic rings for their beer cans. Alternatively, they’ll attach cans together by applying a glue adhesive they have been developing over the last three years. The shift for the brewery group looks to be the beer world’s first attempt to move away from the use of plastic rings or other fasteners that produce additional waste products to recycle. The move proves interesting as it touches on multiple opportunities for the brand tout its efforts:
- This sets up a great PR angle, with Carlsberg committing to the reduction of their plastic pollution output, as well as limiting the potential for their plastic to pollute oceans and harm aquatic animals — all points they can play up in social media and marketing.
- From a brand strategy perspective, the brewer now ranks as an innovator and a socially-conscious company focused on doing its part to conserve the planet, which is huge with millennials and a younger, up-and-coming audience of beer drinkers.
- Analyzing the move through a business lens, other beer providers may feel pressure to match Carlsberg’s initiative if the adhesive proves to be a reliable holder for beer cans. That means big wins for both the industry and the environment.
With some of Carlsberg’s last memorable news-making being about a workers’ strike over limiting employees’ beer drinking throughout the workday to only on their lunch break, the company is no stranger to sticky situations. This latest effort, though, seems like something everyone can toast to.
As a creative, experiential & branding agency in Cleveland, we know a bit about sticky situations and tarnished reputations too – once known as “the mistake on the Lake,” Cleveland now boasts the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the 2016 NBA champs, the Cleveland Cavaliers. If a city can turn its brand around, we can surely help to turn your business brand around too. Cheers!
