Old Grumpy – when a grumpy old man generates business development

Background

To persuade brewers to abandon 6,000 years of tradition in brewing beer. This is a pilot campaign directed at the management and head brewers of 96 major breweries all over the world. The total target group is 600 breweries.

Campaign goals

• To engage 20% of the target group in a dialogue.
• To initiate test processes with head brewers: Index 100.

Idea

Novozymes has introduced a new enzyme to the brewing market, Ondea® Pro, which makes it possible to brew beer from 100% barley without using malt. This saves money and time for the breweries - and reduces carbonemissions from the production by 8%.

But Novozymes’ has experienced widespread resistance to the use of enzymes among head brewers, who are the key decision-makers in all aspects of brewing. The strategy was to talk about business development and how anything that could help reduce costs and increase output was going to be good for profitability.

A report was offered to the target group in which 139 leading brewery operatives discussed their views on enzymes and Ondea® Pro. They could find out more at ondeabrewing.com while their head brewers could visit www.oldgrumpy.com and apply for a job with Old Grumpy and help take The Grumpy Brewery into the future.

The concept had to find a delicate balance between professionalism and humour. Head brewers are highly educated specialists and Novozymes was not in a position to tell them that they were outdated. However, a test had shown that they liked Old Grumpy, a caricature of their own conservative mindset.

At the site, head brewers could play movies and read about the history of the brewery and could participate in quizzes and games with the aim of convincing Old Grumpy about the benefits of the new brewing methods.

The participants consequently got more knowledge about Ondea® Pro without feeling coached. Novozymes gave feedback by e-mail, and the head brewers were eventually invited to test Ondea® Pro.

Results

• 43% of management executives downloaded the analysis and 23% of head brewers engaged in dialogue.
• Test processes have been initiated with brewers: Index 200.

We gave the gold to a campaign which has really taken up the challenge of trying to change attitudes that go back thousands of years. The entire approach of analysing the market and gradually convincing the highly knowledgeable, critical and sceptical target group was brilliantly conceived and executed. The creative concept is humorous and extremely brave of Novozymes at a time when few marketers are trying out new approaches.  However, the campaign also scored well in terms of performance and therefore met all the criteria for Gold.