A first world problem of ours in the alcohol industry is a surplus of branded merch that never made it into market. It’s a real issue. I spent many days of my ABInBev internship playing Tetris in overflowing storage lockers to try to make space for incoming shipments of branded t-shirts, branded glassware, branded fridges, branded giveaways, etc..
This was our trick for clearing out a whole bunch of that merch. The national team rounded up all the stuff they wanted gone, sent it to my home (their ambassador), I wrapped it all up as gifts for the influential people I knew, and then I threw a party for everyone to come collect their gifts from my place
The most valuable part about this is how much shipping cost is avoided. This is essentially an influencer gifting campaign but you don’t need to spend $30/ea on shipping to separate address, plus the cost of the item.
Traditional influencer gifting campaigns are notoriously difficult to coordinate and are very admin heavy with collecting shipping addresses and following up to try to get pictures or track whether the influencer posted on social.
This bypasses most of those hurdles because the brand team is just shipping to one address. I am arranging for the people to come to me to pick up their gifts so they’re doing most of the transportation work here. I take pictures of every single person smiling with their gift at the time that they’re claiming it so I can guarantee that we always have pictures of these people with their gifts.
