Mediaboss Marketing

In todays day and age, markets can change direction in the blink of an eye and huge trends can show up overnight only to die down a few weeks later. Plus, customers are better informed and require more than just your good intentions to pay attention to your brand.

Therefore, businesses must adapt to the crazy fast pace of the market and find new ways to cope with the coming and going of the trends. Thats where marketing automation truly shows its value as it takes over routine tasks and frees up time for ingenuity, creativity, and strategy.

But you cant have marketing automation without the right tools. Luckily, the offer is incredibly diverse with smart automation tools that can help improve the customer experience while also shedding hours off your schedule. However, it can be a bit confusing when trying to decide which tools work the best for your needs.

For instance, did you know you can use social media monitoring tools to automate and enrich your campaigns? Heres how:

Social listening is the process of monitoring what people are saying about topics of interest to you online. With the right tools, you can learn more about your customers opinions about your brand, products, and more.

You can check brand mentions across all platforms, so you dont waste any marketing opportunities. Brand mentions mean people are talking about you, therefore, you have to make sure youll be a part of the conversation.

Plus, you can use social media monitoring tools to take a peek at your competitors strategies and campaigns. After all, inspiration can come from a wide range of sources, right?

Overall, social listening is great for your marketing because it keeps you up to date with popular topics and lets you know whats trendy on the market.

Monitoring tools bring huge loads of data that you can use in all sorts of marketing campaigns and strategies. However, it takes time to understand what each tool brings and how to make the most of it.

Luckily, some of these tools also have analytics built into the system, which means you can create default and customized reports to better understand trends and currents. With the right data, social media can paint an accurate picture of your customer, which is incredibly valuable information especially in todays day and age.

Customer support is the one service you know for sure it can improve your chances on the market when done right. When customers and interested buyers reach out, you must reply quickly and swiftly to keep their satisfaction levels high.

Luckily, nowadays you dont have to hire a call center company to cover basic interactions. Intelligent chatbots are not new technology, but small and medium-sized brands are not extremely keen on using them.

However, with minimal initial investment and the data provided by social media monitoring tools, you can set up user-friendly chatbots that can take over routine questions and even basic actions. Plus, chatbots can stay active 24/7 and they use AI algorithms to learn from the collected data how to better talk with your customers.

Quick note: There are plenty of AI tools you can use to up your marketing and social media strategy. Also, these tools are quite affordable even for small brands, so theres absolutely no need not to use them.

Automation is a great way to make sure your campaigns are moving forward while you are taking care of the creative side of marketing and social media. So get all the tools you need before starting your journey to conquer the world!

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Analytics Insight is an influential platform dedicated to insights, trends, and opinions from the world of data-driven technologies. It monitors developments, recognition, and achievements made by Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Analytics companies across the globe.

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How to Automate Your Marketing With Social Media Monitoring Tools - Analytics Insight

This week, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified about the tens of thousands of pages of internal documents she leaked exposing how Facebook prioritized profits over the publics safety and called on lawmakers to regulate the social media network.

By bringing to light the consequences of Facebooks algorithms, Haugens testimony has forced corporations to rethink their relationship with Facebook and use of consumer data, according to digital media experts at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Most advertisers who invest in Facebook or other social media platforms are aware of the ways in which these technologies collect and use customer data to improve the ROI (return on investment) of advertising dollars. In fact, these capabilities are positioned as a selling point, said Michael Wall, professor of marketing practice and co-director of the Center for Analytics and Business Insights at Olin Business School.

That said, other aspects of how Facebook and others drive great returns for their advertisers have been hidden within their algorithms. The whistleblower has changed that. Advertisers are now aware, and they will now be faced with decisions related to both the ethical use of data and being values-based.

According to Wall, business leaders should be thinking hard about how their firms many of whom have become dependent on platforms such as Facebook for business growth will use customer data responsibly.

Certainly, the amount of users on these platforms is appealing in that it enables marketers the ability to reach a lot of consumers. That said, the real value is driven by the algorithms within these platforms that track everything we say and do to pinpoint which of those users should see our content, when and how many times, Wall said.

This raises ethical questions about what is appropriate to not only track, but also share with third parties some of whom use the data to advertise and track consumers beyond the original platforms. Its easy to focus on Facebook given its behemoth size, but any company using consumer data is at risk of causing harm to its consumers.

Every organization with access to rich consumer data, using Facebook as an advertising vehicle or not, must at least from time to time confront the dilemma: should some information be used to improve the profit line in the short run even though it might not be in the best interest of a consumer? said Yulia Nevskaya, assistant professor of marketing at Olin Business School.

It is a difficult situation to manage for a brand, given that the interests of a particular manager might not always align well with a long-term success of a brand. Implementing data-drivenandvalues-based culture and decision-making is key.

This is not the first time Facebook has found itself in the hot seat for its handling of user data, misinformation and other threats to American democracy. The more customers, companies and government have learned about social media, the more pushback has been generated from each stakeholder, Wall said.

Change is already underway. For example, Apples recent feature with its iOS 14.5 update notifies customers that apps are tracking their data and gives consumers the ability to block said tracking.

This was a massive blow to Facebook, among others, who rely on that tracking to drive more advertising revenue, Wall said. Apple isnt the only one. Google is also preparing to block third-party cookie tracking. These industry actions, coupled with government policies such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the California Privacy Rights Act, will make the use of customer data more difficult in years to come.

Limiting the use of consumer data or cutting ties with Facebook altogether may seem like an unfathomable choice for businesses. However, taking a stand now could pay dividends down the road.

Research over the last several years has shown that customers prefer buying from companies that are aligned with their personal values, Wall said.

In 2018, Nike was one of the first major brands to take a controversial stand with its Colin Kaepernick commercial. Since then, many more companies have taken stands on social issues that align with their brand values, such as racial injustice, voting rights, gun laws, climate change and LGBTQ rights.

As a marketer, my position is that brand equity is ultimately not driven by advertising. Furthermore, it is something we certainly cannot control. Instead, our brand is something we steward, Wall said.

This stewardship is driven by choices we make, which drive the actions we take, and together they lead to consequences in the market. Leaders must make tough choices about near-term growth and long-term growth. The wrong choices today may enable more profit today but may also lead to decreases down the road.

Social media are new, powerful and complex players and we, as a society and as individuals, have to get tooled very quickly to live with them, Nevskaya said.

Social media shapes our world, our information bubble and our choices. We now know that our Facebook feed is carefully calculated by algorithms that decide which political opinions, sources of information and products are most likely to elicit a response from us, she said.

Facebook and other social media companies possibly with the help of regulators have a responsibility to confront the ethical dilemma of their business. At the same time, consumers need access to reliable information about the ways in which social media impacts their lives.

Consumer literacy should be taken seriously and implemented in a comprehensive way, starting at an early age, Nevskaya said.

Over the last two decades, as the situation with Facebook illustrates, companies and organizations developed extremely sophisticated tools to advertise and promote their products and ideas, Nevskaya said. Gone are the days when a television ad for a major brand consisted of mostly repeating the name of the brand many times in a loud voice, which marketers believed would make the consumer remember the product and buy it.

Consumers are smart, but they need to be fully aware of the new methods, how exactly their personal information is used by organizations and to be offered very concrete tips on navigating modern marketing.

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WashU Experts: Facebook controversy raises ethical questions for corporations - The Source - Washington University in St. Louis - Washington...

On Tuesday, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before a Senate panel. The hearing's focus was advertised as "protecting kids online."

"I believe that Facebook's products harm children," she said in her opening statement, saying that the documents she published proved that Facebook's "profit optimizing machine is generating self-harm and self-hate especially for vulnerable groups, like teenage girls." Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone noted on Twitter during the hearing that Haugen "did not work on child safety or Instagram or research these issues and has no direct knowledge of the topic from her work at Facebook."

Researchers have worked for decades to tease out the relationship between teen media use and mental health. Although there is debate, they tend to agree that the evidence we've seen so far is complex, contradictory, and ultimately inconclusive. That is equally true of Facebook's internal marketing data, leaked by Haugen, as it is of the validated studies on the topic.

The leaked Facebook research consists of opinion surveys and interviews. Facebook asked teens about their impressions of Instagram's effect on their body image, mental health, and other issues.

That reliance on self-reporting the teens' own opinions as a single indicator of harm is a problem, says Candice Odgers, a psychologist who studies adolescence at University of California, Irvine and Duke University. That's because teenagers are already primed by media coverage, and the disapproval of adults, to believe that social media is bad for them.

Odgers was a coauthor of a study conducted in 2015 and published in 2020 that found exactly this. "If you ask teens if they are addicted/harmed by social media or their phones, the vast majority say yes," she tells NPR. "But if you actually do the research and connect their use to objective measures ... there is very little to no connection." With the exception of a small increase in behavior problems, her study found no real world connections between smartphone or social media use and several different measures of psychological distress and well-being. "At the population level," the paper concluded, "there was little evidence that digital technology access and use is negatively associated with young adolescents' well-being."

Odgers' paper was peer-reviewed. It had 2,100 participants. It's just one of hundreds of studies published over decades on children and adolescents' media use and well-being. This research started with radio, moved on to television, video games and now social media. All along the way, large peer-reviewed studies have found few correlations. "It's mostly null," Odgers says.

The Facebook research was not peer-reviewed or designed to be nationally representative, and some of the statistics that have received the most attention were based on very small numbers.

According to Facebook's own annotations of the leaked slides, the finding broadly reported as "30% of teen girls felt Instagram made them feel worse about their bodies" was based on 150 respondents out of a few thousand Instagram users surveyed. They only answered the question about Instagram's role if they had already reported having body image issues. So the finding does not describe a random sampling of teenage girls, or even all the girls in the survey. It's a subset of a subset of a subset.

In another of the Facebook surveys, out of more than 2,500 teenage Instagram users surveyed in the U.K. and U.S., 16 total respondents reported suicidal thoughts that they said started with Instagram. Because of the way this data was sliced and diced in Facebook's internal slides, those 16 people, less than 1% of all respondents, became the ultimate source of stories that reported 6% of teens in the U.S. and 13% in the U.K. blamed Instagram for suicidal thoughts.

Vicky Rideout is an independent researcher who has published more than two dozen studies on young people and media use. She says it's "a useless distraction" to compare the confrontation with Facebook to the showdown over Big Tobacco, as senators have been doing at these hearings. That's for two reasons: because the evidence is nowhere near as strong, and because social media unlike cigarettes can be beneficial as well as harmful.

One of Rideout's 2021 studies on teens, unlike Facebook's internal findings, used a nationally representative sample and used a recognized scale to measure depression. In her study, 43% of respondents said using social media usually makes them feel better not worse when they're depressed, stressed, or anxious. Less than half as many, 17%, said it usually makes them feel worse. The rest said it makes no difference either way.

Rideout's research suggests that there is a small group of severely depressed teenagers for whom social media has a bigger impact for better and for worse. She thinks they should be a focus of future research.

Both Rideout and Odgers say that rather than get stuck in an endless loop of doomscrolling over small, inconclusive results, the public conversation on social media and teens needs to move toward solutions. They would like to see companies like Facebook put resources toward designing and testing positive interventions.

Some ideas researchers are currently looking at: connecting young people with information about mental wellness or health; promoting accounts that have been shown to make people feel better about themselves; or prompting teens to check in with peers who are having a rough day.

"There really are a lot of teens suffering from depression, and they really do use a lot of social media, and social media really does play an outsized role in their lives," says Rideout. "If there are concrete steps that Instagram or any other social media company can take to elevate the positive and diminish the negative aspects of their platforms, that's something we should support."

Editor's note: Facebook is among NPR's financial supporters and since publishing her book, The Art of Screen Time, Kamenetz's husband took a job with Facebook. He works in an unrelated division.

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The impact of Facebook and Instagram on teens isn't so clear - NPR

Despite the "bombshell" testimony of theFacebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, which scorched the social network before Congress on Tuesday, advertisers appearto be sticking with the social media giant. Major agencies and brands continue to take the path of least resistance with Facebook, giving the company the benefit of the doubt, even as members of Congress questioned the companys credibility.

Its been a punishing few weeks for Facebook: There was a series of Wall Street Journal reports based on files Haugen obtained before leaving the company earlier this year. The Facebook files and Haugens testimony touched on several issues that advertisers have been working on, hand-in-hand with Facebook, for years, problems like political polarization amplified by algorithms, hate speech, and the effects of social media on teen health.

Advertisers have been trying to understand what the Facebook disclosures mean for the industry. But even the research about kids on Instagram has not quite deterred advertisers. What its going to take is a lot more platform scrutiny in order to have your general brands react, said Chelsea Gross, a senior principal analyst at Gartner.

In the meantime, representatives of major ad agencies, including IPG Mediabrands, Omnicom Media Group, and WPP, said they have been informing their brands about the issues with Facebook. They continue to work with Facebook on priorities, like setting brand safety standards.

Subscribe to Ad Age now for the latest industry news and analysis.

Advertisers also remember the brand boycott from July 2020, which raised many of the same issues being highlighted by Haugen. More than 1,000 brands joined the boycott, organized by the Anti-Defamation League and NAACP, to protest hate speech and disinformation. The action led Facebook to make commitments that it is still working on, like standing upbrand safety tools in News Feed and auditing its community moderation reports. The boycott did not dent Facebooks $85 billion in revenue in 2020.

"I don't even think a boycott does anything," said one media buyer. "They are so big and so much of their money comes from small and local advertisers. I think it is better for national brands to work with Facebook to help them solve these issues."

Ad Age spoke with a number of ad executivesin recent days who said that most brands are not looking for new fights with the worlds largest social network. Advertisers needed to look no further than the outage on Monday to prove the importance of Facebook. On Monday, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were down for six hours, throwing chaos into the ad plans ofmore than 10 million advertisers.

On Tuesday night, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a lengthy post on his Facebook page responding to the claims made by members of Congress, critics and Haugen. At the heart of these accusations is this idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being, Zuckerberg said. That's just not true.

The argument that we deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit is deeply illogical, Zuckerberg said. We make money from ads, and advertisers consistently tell us they don't want their ads next to harmful or angry content. And I don't know any tech company that sets out to build products that make people angry or depressed. The moral, business and product incentives all point in the opposite direction.

On Tuesday, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said that Haugens revelations were a bombshell. The whistleblower revealed information about Facebooks internal research that showed how Instagram could harm teens. Facebook ultimately disclosed the studies publicly, with its own annotations explaining the context. The findings were relevant to advertisers, showing that ads for products related to dieting and body image made some teens feel worse about themselves. Facebook researchers also found that teens were less trusting of influencers, and wanted more authentic peers or authority figures to help them with sensitive personal issues.

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Facebook advertisers see no choice but to stick with the platform - AdAge.com

This October, VinePair is celebrating our second annual American Beer Month. From beer style basics to unexpected trends (pickle beer, anyone?), to historical deep dives and new developments in package design, expect an exploration of all thats happening in breweries and taprooms across the United States all month long.

Debates rage on about the wisdom of his foreign policy, labor relations, and general economic vision for America, but its settled fact that Ronald Reagan was fond of wine. The administration of President Ronald Reagan saw wine service in the White House reach a level of interest unmatched since the time of Thomas Jefferson, wrote author (and former Reagan staffer) Frederick J. Ryan in his 2020 book Wine in the White House: A History. It was at Reagan State Dinners, for example, that both California Zinfandel and Merlot wines were first served at the White House.

Considering his outstanding oenophilia, you have to wonder what the late 40th president would think of the new wine brand hes posthumously shilling for these days. In August 2021, Reagans visage and voice lit up the right-wing corners of digital media in a video ad for We The People Wines, a new-ish company founded by a Republican operative dedicated to Conservative [sic] values. The spot unfolds over nearly two minutes, marrying audio snippets from the Great Communicators 1989 farewell address to unrelated visuals of GOP bogeymen (pro-choice activists, Black Lives Matter protests, etc.) and shibboleths like football players, the troops, and the late Pat Tillman, who was both a football player and a troop. The video ends with a closeup on two bottles of We The People wine in front of a flickering fire.

Don't miss a drop!

Watching the spot, you may find yourself wondering what any of this has to do with selling wine. The answer is nothing, but also maybe everything. As it turns out, theres big money to be made selling conservative versions of everyday beverages. Last year, Black Rifle Coffee Company, maybe the most prominent conservative food and beverage brand, pulled down $163 million in revenue, and has spawned a dozen imitators in the process. We The People Wines, along with Armed Forces Brewing Company an unrelated contract brewer that launched this summer with a viral video featuring former Navy SEAL and current Fox News fixture Rob ONeill represent early efforts to duplicate that success in the beverage alcohol business.

Will it work? These firms are embracing a classic niche strategy, one marketing professor told VinePair, but beer and wine are not as easy as coffee. Then again, $163 million is a helluva reason to give it a shot.

Before we get into the long-term viability of Barry Goldwater-approved booze, lets quickly get up to speed on what the shit is going on here, generally speaking. These days, theres money to be made marketing brands with political posturing to potential customers on both the right and left wings of the American body politic. An Axios/Harris 100 poll from March 2021 found that firms with stated conservative values, like Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby, and firms with more overtly progressive stances (think Patagonia, REI) were both enjoying better reputations among American consumers. Americans are leaning into companies that have strong political positions, in the wake of one of the countrys most divisive election years, wrote Axioss Sara Fischer and Danielle Alberti.

But while mainstream companies across the political spectrum have begun to broadcast their corporate beliefs more lately, conservative firms on the fringes have decades of history hawking goods to right-wing Americans. And the goods are often well, not so good. In a 2012 story for The Baffler, historian and chronicler extraordinaire of modern conservatism Rick Perlstein traced the beginning of this style of direct, partisan commerce to the early 60s, a young Republican operative, and a list of 12,500 GOP donor addresses shadily copied by hand from congressional files. Subscriber lists to ideological organs are pure gold to the third-party interests who rent them as catchments for potential customers, explained Perlstein.

What started as direct-mail campaigns raising money for dubious causes (with a nice vig going to the direct-mailer who controlled the list, of course) metastasized into something entirely more commercial once the internet came along. Email marketing added a whole new dimension to snake oil sales. And today, surgical precision of social media marketing, combined with record-breaking rates of political polarization and tribalism, and the rise of direct-to-consumer e-commerce, have pushed all this in colorful new directions. The time is ripe for conservative brands to find, pitch, and profit off aggrieved conservatives seeking alternatives to the products they perceive as liberal.

Conservative clothes? Try Nine Line Apparel or Grunt Style. Home goods? MyPillow has your pillow. And if dietary supplements are your game, Alex Jones is the name. The terminally online InfoWars conspiracy theorist has made millions of dollars shilling stuff like anti-coronavirus toothpaste and testosterone pills to help users push back in the fight against the globalist agenda. These brands vary in quality and griftiness (you can guess where Jones potions land on that axis) but they share a tried-and-true message: Dont buy stuff from companies that are (or at least, seem) liberal, buy our stuff instead. Take Black Rifle Coffee, for example. I want people who voted for Trump to know that there is another option for you, said the companys CEO, Evan Hafer, in 2017. Starbucks chief exec Howard Schultz doesnt want your business. I do.

An even more direct way of saying the same thing: This is a huge entrepreneurial opportunity. You dont have to give money to people that hate you; you can give money to people who share your values. Thats how Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Will Cain teed up We The People Wines founder, Ryan Coyne, in an August 2021 interview about the company. (It watches more like sponsored content than a lot of actual sponsored content.)

Absolutely right, absolutely right, Coyne responded. On the program, the Republican marketing operative claimed that We The People was selling tens of thousands of bottles every day thanks to the Reagan-inflected ad, which he said had racked up over 7 million views in just a few days. Those sales figures are impossible to verify independently, and VinePair was unable to reach Coyne for comment. (A representative for Coyne, James Davis, responded to our inquiry about We The People Wines and agreed in a phone conversation to coordinate an interview before press time, then stopped responding.) But if Coyne counts units sold like he does views, the sales numbers he gave Fox & Friends may be padded: A VinePair review of the brands social media accounts shows a view count closer to 2 million across all platforms.

Black Rifle didnt come up on Fox & Friends, but in another interview Coyne namechecked the coffee firm unprompted. There were no brands saying what weve been saying, he said in an early September interview with former New York Yankees strength coach/current grindset YouTuber Dana Cavalea. Theres a couple that people reference that we know well. Black Rifle Coffee is a good example. They are very pro-military, but I think most people identify them as similarly situated, [based on] what they support and believe in, as we are.

But what if youre a conservative who doesnt like wine? Or perhaps youre simply holding out for a booze brand that exalts American service members more explicitly than We The People Wines, or the bevy of veteran-owned, military-themed breweries and liquor brands already on the market? Never fear! Armed Forces Brewing Company is here.

We started in Annapolis, Md., initially as Seawolf Brewery, which was pretty much a tribute to Navy service, Alan Beal, AFBCs chief executive, tells VinePair. (The official launch coincided with the 2017 Military Bowl, naturally.) After being inundated with interest from drinkers who wanted beers fting other branches of the U.S. military, Beal explains, We decided to develop some other concepts, other brands. It kind of morphed into Armed Forces Brewing Company. The firm now has four beer lines: Seawolf, Soldier, Airman, and Jarhead (invading soon), all of which are contract-brewed at New Realm Brewing Co.s Virginia Beach plant. Beal, who did not serve in any branch of the military (though he comes from a military family), describes AFBC as a sort of Joint Base Command Center for the consumer-facing brands.

In that analogy, the CEO would be the ranking officer. But after watching AFBCs promotional video released around Independence Day and filmed in the please-go-viral style that Dollar Shave Club pioneered in 2012 viewers could be forgiven for thinking the companys commandant was feature player Rob ONeill, the former Navy SEAL who is widely credited with firing the shots that killed Osama Bin Laden. (He wrote a book about it.) The former SEAL Team 6 operator is AFBCs director of military relations and national brand ambassador, and holds a position on its board of directors.

The video, a pitch to would-be investors to buy shares in AFBC via its ongoing equity crowdfunding raise, is shot through with lowest-common-denominator gags. ONeill pours a can of piss water into a toilet; ONeill shoves a slackster coffee house misanthrope; ONeill calls in a drone strike on a building labeled pretentious foreign brewery. Women or is it the same woman? in chesty approximations of actual military uniforms often appear in the frame, but never speak. The spot concludes with an anti-mask joke.

Its not as baldly partisan as We The Peoples brand positioning and video, which at first glance could be mistaken for a campaign attack ad. An appetite for war, after all, is one of the few things most Republican and Democrat politicians still have in common. But while AFBCs video lacks Reagan cameos, its jingoistic visions of American patriotism and military identity suggest a decidedly conservative worldview. As does ONeills participation. Though the AFBC brand ambassador claims affiliation with neither party, hes a regular guest on conservative cable outlets like Fox News and Newsmax, rails about illegals, leftists, and stolen elections on Twitter, and praises right-wing influencers like Dinesh DSouza and Candace Owens.

Nevertheless, Beal denies that his company has a political bent. Robs his own man, he says of his companys brand ambassador. He points out that ONeill has even dinged President Trump a couple times out there in the Twitterverse. Im 57 years old, I remember when Democrats and Republicans could go to a taproom or a bar, have a beer together and talk politics, and not want to kill each other, Beal says. Itd be great to get back to those days.

The U.S., by most accounts, is not headed back to those days any time soon. That may be bad news for the country, but its good news for a company looking to turn partisan fervor into consumer spending especially in a competitive market like retail beverage alcohol, where brand-building is vital to sustained success. These firms are embracing a classic niche strategy, says Tim Calkins, clinical professor of marketing and associate marketing chair at Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management. These are big, crowded markets, and one of the classic ways to enter a very cluttered market is to find a way to really resonate with a small group of people. Thats what these firms are very clearly doing.

Calkins says that conservative start-ups in familiar product categories stand to benefit from a few compounding market factors: low barriers to entry that require little product innovation; powerful, cheap targeted social media marketing that can find like-minded customers like never before (no more hand-copied donor addresses!); and established competition that is loathe to dip its toe into politics of any persuasion.

Politically charged products are a segment that other [firms] are not likely to go, says Calkins. Its not likely that A-B InBev is going to launch a beer that directly competes [with Armed Forces Brewing Company], because the area is polarizing. That is the challenge, but also perhaps the best part of the idea. AFBCs approach is niche in more ways than one: Not only is it going after pro-military beer drinkers with its marketing, but its distribution plan is built around the thousands of on-base military exchanges across the country. Were a great fit for those stores, says Beal. They do about $359 million in retail package sales a year. Thats a big niche market. Theyre in 10 so far, plus Total Wines, and were recently approved for Wegmans.

Of course, table stakes still apply. As Calkins points out, beverage alcohol products are not as easy as coffee to market due to regulatory hurdles and, in beers case, freshness concerns, too. But upstream of logistics is basic drinkability: A firm that doesnt produce a competitive product wont be able to defend even a well-fortified partisan niche forever. On this front, AFBC may have work to do; its Seawolf Special Hops IPA was not well received by a reviewer at military publication Task and Purpose. No part of it is enjoyable, even if youre the sort of masochist who loves having their taste buds scorched by more hops than a rabbit farm, concluded writer Matt Sampson.

(Weve moved on from that, responds Beal, when prompted. Of course I read the article. I guess he didnt like our beer, and thats absolutely fine.)

By contrast to AFBCs base-based model, We The People Wines leans on direct-to-consumer e-commerce sales to get its ~$30 bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay to thirsty conservatives in 17 states. But according to both Calkins and fellow marketer Nathalie Spielmann, Ph.D., the companies are similarly savvy in the way they engender ownership and belonging through their products and messaging. Its a marketing tactic that encourages psychological ownership based on an idealized national identity, Spielmann, an associate professor of marketing at Frances NEOMA Business School and a diploma candidate in the prestigious WSET program, tells VinePair.

What these brands are trying to say is, Im going to put out this product, [whether] its coffee or beer or wine, that clearly speaks to one half of the population or one political ideology, and Im going to promote this idealized national identity to those people and give them a sense of psychological ownership, which will then trickle down to more loyalty towards my brand because my brand is representing what people actually have as values. Its why Coyne talks about customers joining our community, and We The People bottles are emblazoned with the slogan every sip is another vote.

AFBC takes the ownership pitch even further, offering people the opportunity to literally buy into its professed values by purchasing shares in the firm. Shares start at $200; the highest tier, operator, requires an investment of $50,000 or more. According to a review of the offering materials by Ben Ostrow, a former private-equity investment analyst, Beal and his team are valuing the company at $38.6 million and thats before any capital raised this round. (Ostrow performed a similar analysis on BrewDog USAs offering. Both companies use the same federal regulation, Regulation A, to conduct crowdfunding equity raises exempted from the Securities and Exchange Commissions registration requirements.) Its an eye-popping valuation for a brewing company thatll produce just ~2,000 barrels this year, and doesnt even own a physical plant. But for investors with like-minded politics, the appeal of being a part of something can be a powerful draw. When you invite people to be investors, all of a sudden they are part of the brand, they are part of the movement, says Calkins. Its interesting: You see political campaigns do exactly the same thing. Political campaigns are constantly asking people to be part of an advisory group, or to fill out the survey, or to provide their perspective. Its the same basic strategy of trying to make people feel really connected.

At this point you may be asking yourself: Are conservatives truly alienated by beverage alcohol brands to the point that they need Republican Chardonnay and rally-round-the-flag IPA?

To Spielmann, this question misses the forest for the trees. The political polarization gripping the U.S. isnt going away, and the fact that conservative beverage alcohol firms dont have Black Rifles Starbucksian foil is hardly a non-starter. Why wouldnt you capitalize on a market trend? she asks. The emergence of booze brands like We The People and AFBC (and all the other conservative commerce that preceded them) are, from a marketing standpoint at least, an inevitable outcome of the struggling American experiment. Are these brands revolutionizing [the marketing approach from] what was in the past the war effort, or the Cold War, these types of discussions? No, theyre just repackaging it for a target market that is much more attuned to that message, says Spielmann. Theres nothing new under the sun, selling products that reinforce customers sense of belonging and ownership least of all.

At the end of We The Peoples original ad, Reagan intones: Once you begin a great movement, theres no telling where it will end. Its a fitting sentiment. Reagan was responsible for mainstreaming the conservative political project, but theres simply no way he could have guessed that his dogmatic zeal for electioneering abroad and the upward redistribution of wealth at home would one day give rise to a right-wing wine company made in his image. But here we are anyway. The Gipper is gone, Trump is still here, and bipartisanship seems more like a punchline than ever. In this era, it seems inevitable that Black Rifle-fication of the booze business will continue. We know why and how; the only question left is, What took so long?

This story is a part of VP Pro, our free content platform and newsletter for the drinks industry, covering wine, beer, and liquor and beyond. Sign up for VP Pro now!

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The Inevitable Grift of Slinging 'Conservative' Wine and Beer at a Country Driven Mad by Social Media - VinePair