Matilda Bay is one of Australia's oldest craft beer breweries, and its all-new Hazy Lager marked its first venture into the mainstream beer market. The beer itself was a smooth and easy-to-drink lager with an unfiltered, hazy finish. Unlike other craft beers, it served as a gateway for mainstream drinkers to begin exploring the craft beer scene.

Our goal was to appeal to the mainstream lager market – which was already dominated by three iconic lager brands (VB, Carlton and Great Northern) and their passionate fans.

Research showed Hazy Lager performed great on taste. We knew once people tried it, they'd keep drinking it. So our brief became getting them to take that first sip.

We needed a campaign that would get Australians who are staunchly loyal to their favourite beer to branch out and give ours a taste instead – ultimately driving sales and long-term adoption.

In the Australian beer market, three brands - VB, Carlton, and Great Northern - dominate, with histories spanning decades, even centuries.

These brands aren't just the most popular beers nationally and by state; they are cultural icons that have become symbols of Australia’s history and identity.

It’s common to see proud Aussies boasting VB singlets, Carlton tattoos or even creating shrines to Great Northern in their sheds (seriously, it was a news story).

Any new entrant to the lager category has to navigate not just a preference for taste but a landscape where changing your choice of beer is akin to changing your identity.

When it comes to lager, Aussies are a loyal bunch. They don’t just drink their favourite beers, they proudly wear branded merch, get tattoos of logos, even build shrines in their sheds.

So, to encourage trial of its new Hazy Lager, Matilda Bay decided not to compete with people’s favourite beers, but instead help them love their favourites even more.

By just ordering Hazy Lager at their local pub or bottle shop, Aussies could walk away with custom-made prizes from the beers they already love – like a VB massage chair, a Carlton Dry hot tub, Great Northern fishing kits, and many more – created, built and sourced by Matilda Bay themselves.

How’s this legal? Conveniently, Matilda Bay is owned by the same parent company as Aussies’ favourite beers.

We activated prize displays in 208 venues across Australia, driving huge adoption of Hazy Lager as Aussies’ 2nd favourite beer.

To grow profitable sales for the new Hazy Lager, craft beer brewer Matilda Bay needed to tap into a mainstream lager audience – who are staunchly brand loyal.

So instead of trying to change their behaviour, with nonexistent brand awareness and a tiny media budget, we weaponised our audience's love for their favourite mainstream lager brands - Carlton, VB and Great Northern.

Rather than try to convince fans to ditch their favourites completely, we encouraged them to add Matilda Bay Hazy Lager to their repertoire.

Our campaign interrupted drinkers’ path to purchase at every touchpoint. Using competitor sales data, we showed up wherever Aussies were engaging with their favourite beers already. By giving away branded merchandise from their favourite beer brands, we gave drinkers a compelling reason to give our unknown craft lager a try.

The campaign's CTA was straightforward: switch your usual beer to Hazy Lager and win.

Matilda Bay’s Second Favourite Beer promotion ran for eight weeks in 208 pubs and bottle shops across Australia – with a prize pool of over 4,000.

We worked with competitors to design, create and source each prize, ensuring fan appeal.

Using sales data, we featured prizes drinkers would love most in each venue, transforming spaces into prize showcases, accompanied by point of sale. Key venues exhibited vintage, game-show style installations that glorified prizes complete with falling glitter, guarded by velvet ropes.

Every touchpoint disrupted path to purchase, from wobblers on shelves near customers' favourite beers, to tap talkers.

Each installation invited customers to choose a prize from the selection in front of them, or instantly win one through a QR-enabled online draw.

We also turned our instagram into a prize gallery, targeting those active in other beer fan groups, and recruiting our competitor’s super fans to post.

Our ultimate goal was to drive both trial and distribution, and we achieved both.

We gave away 4,150 prizes across both our online draw and in-store activations in 208 venues nationwide.

This led to a +160% increase in sales per bottle shop, with +45% more kegs of Hazy Lager in pubs, +48% uplift of orders in stockists. Some venues even got a massive +550% growth in Hazy Lager sales.

This was a +139% improvement on previous Matilda Bay product launches, making it the most successful product launch in their history.

These figures indicate that Matilda Bay successfully carved out a space in the seemingly impenetrable mainstream lager market, full of loyalists who rarely drink anything other than their favourite beer.