Drink Me: Creating the Alcohol Experience Rabbit Hole
By Greg Wells, Strategy Consulting Director
How do you create better alcohol purchase and consumption experiences?
We’ve all been down a YouTube rabbit hole, watched what Netflix has recommended to us, been influenced by content recommendation social media posts (ok not always in a good way), and considered what Amazon recommended. These are all based on the machine learning algorithms and AI models that serve up content based on your and others' past behaviours and other data sources.
The thing with subscriptions is, to be successful they need to add value. That value often presents itself in the form of delivering relevant content and experiences derived from outsourced thinking and decision-making. This is not just relevant to subscriptions but to a variety of services and is an increasing trend in many sectors. This is generally to increase efficiency (save time and money) and deliver effectively (get the experience and content right).
Illustration by Gabriella @ STORMBRANDS
As highly adaptable beings, along with most other behaviours, alcohol consumption has adjusted to our new lives. Consumers looked for discovery and education in addition to entertainment to relieve from lockdown monotony. This could be a way to amplify the simple pleasures in life or learn about new ones entirely, creating new rituals to meet our next context.
Food and meal boxes, including wine-tasting kits, were the second most popular type of subscription in the UK, after entertainment. This has very much been a needs-driven spike caused by our starvation from external stimuli and easy access. Gifting subscriptions were also a safe way to connect with those far and wide, providing others with a thoughtful surprise. But how sustainable are these new subscription business models? Will they disappear now we can physically see our friends and go to the shops safely again?
One thing we do know is that culturally, the rise in home entertainment is here to stay - as are economic struggles. Home consumption is an opportunity to go premium without the restaurant mark-up, yet consumers are expecting more than convenience and cost-efficiency. The savvy purchaser might be gaining kudos within their circles but with a newly acquired broader palette they are expecting to be surprised, delighted, engaged, and entertained throughout their entire user experience, beyond what they can obtain out and about. Brands will need to adapt yet again.
The rituals that surround the alcohol category are those of conviviality, discovery, emotional connections, and memories. They are heavily cultural. Alcohol is traditionally either at the centre of a ritual like ‘the after-work pint,’ or an enabler within an occasion. Leveraging those core drivers remain relevant and brands will need to innovate to remain top of mind now that we have more options for entertainment.
One way for alcohol subscription brands to remain relevant and deliver an optimised consumer experience and products would be to increase their application of machine learning algorithms and AI, drawn from subscribers’ purchase and consumption behaviour, and integrating data from other sources. AI is not just relevant to alcohol subscriptions but to product development, packaging, and marketing. Ultimately, it enables channel consumption insights to inform upstream development.
Another way to add value could be, connecting with consumers’ other passion points like Books + Beer already does. Another could be to integrate on and off-trade purchase and consumption experiences by increasing gamification. Think, a beer subscription service (some have already integrated social media discussions) x pubs (maybe owned by the same company) x Pokémon Go, Strava, or Fortnite? This could potentially mitigate some channel performance concerns, create new consumption rituals and augment existing ones. This could be achieved further through apps; cookies etc. creating a neat little alcohol purchase and consumption experience rabbit hole.
