Hot on the heels of Gaymers cider comes Swedish brand Kopparberg, another cider brand hoping to exploit the still buoyant UK cider market with targeted festival activity within a wider music marketing strategy.
The “One Big Tree” experiential concept will be present at both Camp Bestival and Connect, and centres around the Kopparberg Tree. During the day you can chill and drink Kopparberg under the shade of the tree (nice reference to an idyllic way of drinking cider), whilst at night the tree will ‘come to life’ and provide the backdrop to a bit of a lively shindig.
Nice stuff, although the combined footfall of both events is extremely unlikely to do much in terms of brand awareness and volume sales. It feels like they’ve come to the party a little late - there are several other festivals that they should also be at, but I know that those festivals sorted their cider pouring deals a long time ago. So let that be a lesson to y’all - get your offers in with promoters sooner rather than later! Given that most of the smaller festivals are probably on 1yr deals, Kopparberg would do well to start conversations for 2009.
So Kopparberg should be putting added emphasis on the other activities they are doing - The Singles Club and The Privilige Card, and the emphasis here is on supporting new music (is there enough differentiation to the Gaymers Grassroots Gigs? Who is doing it better?)
The Singles Club launches this month and will be releasing three double A-side singles throughout the summer. The singles will feature tracks from six emerging talents, produced as a ltd edition 7″, and also available for download.
The Privilige Card will give holders free or discounted entry to a number of club nights across Scotland (???) throughout the summer, and will be entered into a prize draw to win a pair of Connect tickets.
This seems a bit underwhelming to be honest - they could probably have done far more by linking up with someone like Rough Trade Records and doing co-promotions; the association with probably the best known indy record brand would have given them kudos in emerging talent, and they could extend the brand across the Rough Trade retail network, customer database etc, and do some branded tours etc etc.