Long Live Roll 'n' Rock!

Brandweek,  July 17, 2000  by Gerry Khermouch

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It all got started, Darin Wolf recalled, in early 1999 when a handful of Labatt USA and agency people were lounging around Sharkey's bar in Latrobe during an ad shoot for Rolling Rock beer, which in its marketing is given to heralding its roots in that small, western Pennsylvania town. As a positioning exercise, Labatt's then-president, Paul Cooke, had urged the marketing staff to match their brands to different colors, songs and the like. It was the kind of top-management project that generally draws the derision of nuts-and-bolts marketers, but now, under the influence of a few Rolling Rocks, it wasn't seeming like quite such a lame idea to marketing director Wolf, associate brand manager Jon Genese, and agency exec Adam Goldstein of Ammirati Puris Lintas, New York.

"We were half-serious, mostly joking, but then we got to discussing what song, and then we said, what band?" Wolf said. "It quickly evolved to: We should do a concert with the bands that represent Rolling Rock, right here in Latrobe."

Throw in a cold call shortly afterward from an entertainment agency exec--Wolf took the call planning to pick the guy's brain for free, but ended up retaining him--and the result is the Rolling Rock Town Fair, set for Aug. 5 and headlined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Filter, Moby and Fuel. Though the fair resembles "homecoming" efforts undertaken by brands as varied as Saturn, Snapple, Jack Daniels and Guinness Stout, it is by far the most extreme activity ever devised for Rock. Long positioned as a low-key, quirky brand, Rock's recent promotions have run more toward art poster giveaways.

The fair proved a nearly instant sellout this spring, attracting more than 20,000 buyers eager to make the trek to the Westmoreland County fairgrounds outside of Latrobe. Throw in a pool of 15,000 tickets for use in on-air radio promos, 12-pack and 24-pack sweepstakes and trade incentives, and visitors will be coming from 34 states, many of them far removed from Rock's core Northeast and Midwest bases. Some 19,000 visitors (55%) will come from outside western Pennsylvania, with 12,000 of them having to travel five hours or more to attend. All hotels and campgrounds are sold out in the area. Not least, on eBay, tickets last week were being bid at $170, far beyond the official $33 price (a number derived from the mysterious "33" that adorns Rock's distinctive painted-label green bottles).

Wolf figures he could have sold 8,000 more tickets but dropped the idea so as not to inflame a local controversy over whether the event is too big for the town. Controversy notwithstanding, Labatt execs expect the show to go on without a hitch. "I don't see any way this won't happen" Wolf said.

Its success in intriguing consumers comprises only part of the Town Fair's success. Perhaps more significantly for the long run, the promo instantly dispelled reservations many wholesalers had about the brand's ability to reconnect with entry-level drinkers, even after a packaging upgrade a few years ago that put it back on a modest growth track. As proof, Labatt execs say the event has inspired 3,000 Town Fair nights at on-premise accounts in 48 ADIs, often enabling the sales force to work its way back into accounts that had spurned the brand since its mid-1990s heyday Indeed, the ticket sellout and bidding frenzy on eBay have been music to wholesalers' and retailers' ears, because now consumers desiring tickets will have to win them by buying the beer off-premise or attending Town Fair bar nights-smack in the middle of the hypercompetitive summer selling season.

"It's going to be another Woodstock!" exulted Jack Glunz, president of beer wholesaler Louis Glunz, Lincolnwood, III. "It's not just tying in with the Super Bowl, We're doing this one ourselves, and that takes a lot of guts.

At the same time, as Wolf's team readily acknowledges, Town Fair's reception has prompted a re-evaluation of the brand's fundamental marketing direction. The warm reception to the promo's more aggressive tone has made brand managers finally heed an ongoing wholesaler criticism that Rock marketing, in its effort to be authentic and quirky, has been too subdued to break through to coveted entry-age drinkers. That's been their gripe about an ad campaign developed by APL that featured comedian Jim Galfigan playing an eccentric, if affable small-town philosopher who rambles on from fishing bridges, bowling alleys and other Latrobe landmarks about the small-town virtues of the brand, While the ads tout the brand's core equities--Latrobe, the green bottle, "33," and horsehead-and-steeplechase imagery of the label -- many feel the ads appeal more to older drinkers already in the franchise than to newer ones distracted by a clamor of craft brews and imports.

"It's confusing," a major wholesaler had said earlier this year after viewing the latest ads, in a typical comment. "They tell us they want cutting-edge consumers, but the commercials don't seem to go after them."