Founded on two key beliefs – that creativity fuels creativity, and that creativity yields delicious pints – Collective Arts Brewing fuses the worlds of art and craft beer.
In their mission to spread creativity, they’ve featured the work of over 2000 artists on their cans since 2013, bringing their designs to beer lovers across North America, Europe, and Asia. We’ll cheers to that.
Collective Arts Brewing uses social media to promote their business and share their mission. As the brand grows, their primary goal is to build a community space that celebrates their artists before themselves. Their message is clear: it’s purpose first, product second.
Our mission is to spread creativity because we feel the world can be a better place when you have more creativity.
But what happens when it’s 2020 and it isn’t quite business-as-usual? Collective Arts Brewing has shown how to successfully pivot on social without breaking away from their community mission.
Community building with the Visual Planner
Collective Arts Brewing uses Instagram as their primary social media platform. Their feed is an online community space with a focus on building genuine connections and engaging with their audience.
The goal is to create a two-way conversation with our community.
With art and design at their heart, the Collective Arts Brewing Instagram feed is a natural extension of their brand. The team uses Later’s Visual Planner to drag and drop posts and plan out their feed – making sure it’s cohesive, on-brand, and balances product and purpose. Plus, Later’s user-friendly interface makes it easy for the whole team to collaborate and review content before posting.
With art and design at their heart, the Collective Arts Brewing Instagram feed is a natural extension of their brand. The team uses Later’s Visual Planner to drag and drop posts and plan out their feed – making sure it’s cohesive, on-brand, and balances product and purpose. Plus, Later’s user-friendly interface makes it easy for the whole team to collaborate and review content before posting.
With the Visual Planner, you can see a full picture of what you have planned.
Storytelling with Link in Bio
To support their creative community, Collective Arts Brewing uses Instagram as a tool to elevate artists’ voices, sharing their stories as well as their work. Putting storytelling at the center of their strategy has helped them raise the profiles (and follower counts) of the emerging artists they work with.
We want people to feel emotionally connected to our brand, so we leverage our community and our artists to tell their stories.
Sharing individual stories, varied content, and different products means the team juggles multiple calls-to-action. By creating a fully-clickable replica of their Instagram feed, Later’s Link in Bio allows them to link individual Instagram posts to specific articles, websites, videos, and more. This means they can promote a range of content all at once – and know it will still be discoverable weeks later.
We invest a lot in our content and website, so we’re constantly trying to drive people back and we found Link in Bio to be a really useful functionality - the ability to send people to different places off of Instagram is great.
Pivoting during tumultuous times
This year, many companies are facing the challenge of adjusting their strategy and moving their business online. For many of these brands, social media offers a new way to reach potential customers.
When bars closed due to COVID-19, Collective Arts Brewing pivoted to e-commerce within their home region of Ontario, Canada. They recognized that their growing Instagram following meant social media could be a key channel for driving those local sales.
We had to turn our business around overnight.
But this posed a new challenge – promoting sales in areas they could deliver without alienating their international audience or losing sight of their community mission.
The solution? Selling but with their storytelling twist. Rather than emphasizing their products, they focused their messaging on the artists the sales supported.
We didn’t just post ‘here’s what we’re selling’, but ‘here’s why you should buy it’, and ‘here’s who you’re helping when you buy’.
By staying organized, yet agile, they’ve balanced product and purpose and kept their community at the heart of their mission – helping ensure the long-term success of their brand, even in unpredictable times.
Watch the video case study below!
