To motivate the community members and clarify their roles and missions, we founded a virtual breweries company on cyber environment “The 100 Beer Lovers Company,” and recruited “employees” to work at the virtual company.

Company mission was presented to the employees, such as “Create a new type of beer that will give you the best smile in Japan” and “Revitalize an existing beer brand.” Authority of project was fully transferred from the client to the hands of the virtual employees, and all value chain of the projects were executed with and by the consumers, nay “employees.”

Online communication frameworks and real events were designed throughout the project.

Virtual company departments, such as Product Development Department and Advertising Department were set up online, and discussions were held 24 hours, 7 days a week.

Also, head office functions, such as Human Resources and General Affairs were set up to support and promote online get-togethers, and thus made ground for “real” team building in the “virtual” environment.

Even After-5-Beer-Parties were organized online, so that employees scattered nationwide could enjoy the moment together and become a mission motivated team.

Along with the online communications, real-life events were executed from time to time, also in the context of virtual company. Trip to Hokkaido barley fields was planned as “research business trip,” beer-stand operation at beer festival as “sales division mission.”

By plotting communication actions through the marketing value chain, “employees” were rewarded with their very own celebration of actual product launch.

Over 1,500 Super-Loyal-Employees, who willingly contribute to the growth of the brand and company, with no actual pay, were created.In terms of payment cost worth this new group of resources by the average wage of Sapporo Holdings (8,000,000 JPY/ 66,000 EURO per year) , 1,500 Super-Loyal-Employees means 12,000,000,000 JPY/ 100,000,000 EURO human resource cost.

The “employees” recruited for The 100 Beer Lovers Company became a non-negligible source of resource portfolio expansion at Sapporo.