I think it is safe to say that Big Rock Brewery is Calgary’s favorite beer. Since the start, its customers have been its biggest promoters. Long before it became known as crowdsourcing, Big Rock thought up creative ways to involve those promoters in its brand. The brewery does a great job of managing its crowdsourced campaigns so both the brand and customers win. I think one of the reasons it continues to be successful is Big Rock is heavily involved in the local community. They promote local arts and culture events and even host their own lecture series. Their VP of corporate and community affairs, Jim Button, wrote about how the Big Rock Eddies came about – and why people still love it going into its 17^th year!

Would you pay $100 to watch commercials while sampling the product being advertised?

Jim Button

I’m sure Ed McNally, Founder Big Rock Brewery, had no idea back in 1993 that he was participating in a powerful tool called Crowdsourcing.  Really, he was simply having some fun with the customers that love his brand while saving himself some money.

What Ed knew was that his small regional craft brewery couldn’t afford the high price of traditional advertising. Even if he could, he wasn’t interested in following suit and doing what the large industrial breweries were doing. He knew PR was much more powerful than traditional advertising in creating a meaningful relationship for a product that had a short history and relatively small market share.

So, take his Scottish background, and combine it with his desire to create a relationship with beer drinkers and you have The Big Rock Eddies Beer Commercial Contest. Instead of hiring an agency and booking expensive media time to create awareness, Ed simply asked his beer drinkers to create beer commercials for him. After all, who would be better at selling than the people that already loved the beer?  And really, what could be more fun than drinking beer and watching a bunch of funny beer commercials.

17 years and thousands of videos later, the Eddies have become a much sought after trophy and equally sought after event ticket. Every year tickets for the annual fundraiser sell out in the first day, over $60,000 is raised for charity and everyone walks away happy. Imagine that, close to 2,000 people attending a party and paying $100 a ticket to sample your beer while watching your beer commercials. Crazy.