Pabst Blue Ribbon Lost 40,000 Pounds of Beer. The Viral Reaction May Be Worth More
The hottest new marketing opportunity for brands? Heists.
Looking for a brand boost? Start praying that a truckload of product gets stolen.
This past March, nearly half a million KitKat bars went missing the week before Easter when a truck carrying a 12-ton shipment of chocolate left a production facility in central Italy and never showed up to its final stop in Poland. Nestlé turned the inventory loss into an even bigger marketing win by leaning into the absurdity of the crime, which became a viral joke across social media.
Now, that CPG theft hype cycle is repeating itself. This time in the United States and with products from a different aisle of the grocery store. 40,000 pounds of beer have been pilfered. A full truckload of 1,602 cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon vanished from an Anheuser-Busch distribution center in Montclair, California earlier this month. The lagers have been on the lam for more than two weeks. With no leads, the company has taken to social media to search for clues—and of course, a little free publicity too.
“To the thief: we don’t fault you for wanting to brag to your friends how much PBR you have, we just wish you obtained it the honorable way,” the brand wrote on Instagram in a post that generated more than 8 times as many likes and more than 25 times as many comments, compared with previous ones, including one from KitKat. “This is real and we are deadly serious.”
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Serious in fact that the company’s CEO Greig
So serious in fact that the company’s CEO Greig DeBow took to TikTok yesterday with a personal plea for the truck’s return, offering a $20,000 reward for any new information that could lead to the stolen beer’s return.
“As many of you might have heard, a great deal of PBR has gone missing,” said DeBow. “There’s been a hell of a lot of support so far, and we really appreciate it.”
Throughout the entire video, DeBow looks like he is trying to hold back from breaking into laughter. He has plenty of reasons to smile. The missing beer is reportedly valued at around $70,000, but the viral reaction across social media has been worth far more than that. In fact, this unintended marketing campaign seems to have been so effective that it’s even prompted a few teasing comments speculating whether the beer heist was actually an inside job.
As one person wrote in response on TikTok, “I’m calling publicity stunt.”
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Source: www.inc.com
