Cheerwine’s Digital life

I can usually tell if someone has heard of Cheerwine by looking to see if their mouths begin frothing when the name is mentioned. This little North Carolina-based soda brand has produced some fiercely loyal customers in their almost hundred years of being around (just under 70,000 of them on Facebook at this writing). They have one small problem: once their fans leave NC, they leave behind the delicious bubbly stuff. They’re working on the distribution issue by teaming up with Pepsi, but it’s a slow roll, and there are cases of withdrawal happening nationwide.

Working with Woods Witt Dealy (who came up with the new overall brand message) we changed their online strategy. Previously the brand and all of its info was spread out across multiple domain names, making it hard to find information and even harder to find the product. It was decided that the campaign elements should live on facebook, where the fans were already congregating. This has turned out to be very successful for the campaigns so far, and being able to view the reactions of the audience has been great from a data-nerdy standpoint.

That left the main website open focus on the biggest request from the fans: “How can I get my hands on this stuff?” We made sure the site did two things and did them well: helped a user FIND Cheerwine if it was close, or enable the to BUY some if it was not. We integrated facebook into the products section so people could share their favorites, and a section was created to showcase and relink facebook campaign elements, in case a wayward user went looking on the main site for something they heard about on the radio or saw on a billboard.

Check out some screenshots of the site and a facebook campaign, or just check out the live sites: Cheerwine.com or facebook.com/Cheerwine