In the spirit of my last two posts, here is a quick overview of the liquor brands that use Twitter. For the most part, the well established brands are sitting on the sidelines while the younger upstarts figure out how to gain traction via this nascent channel.

• @BaconVodka: Living up to its porcine name, Bakon Vodka provides tasty drink recipes while keeping their 2,055 followers informed on where and when they can buy this product.
• @MR1X supports a relatively new line extension from Belvedere Vodka that is imbued with the lifestyle of Parisian graffiti artist Andre. With over 880 followers, the tweets track Andre’s world travels and endless nightlife. MR1X aggressive use of Twitter, Flickr and YouTube may make it the first generation of truly social media-driven spirits.
• @Belvedere_Vodka keeps their 539 followers buzzed with a steady stream of summer drink recipes and other self-promotions.
• @DonCenobio: This tequila brand has about 500 followers and focuses on brand-related event activity.
• @Blackbottle: This whisky brand enthusiastically covered their appearance at the Taste of London for its 353 followers which may be just enough for them.
• @CieloTequila: This Mexican based tequila has 300+followers and claims to be “the smoothest tequila on the market” but with no events listed it would be hard for anyone to know since it hasn’t updated its page in over a month.
• @NudeVodka09: This scantily veiled brand keeps its 300+ followers updated on events and new concoctions. They seemed to be more engaged than most as many of their posts are fan offered thank you’s.
• @RepublicTequila: By Texans for Texans, this brand seem to focus solely on The Lone Star state reporting on local promotions for its 230+ long horned followers.
• @SoloranzoTkila: …..Tkila…..get it? The text-friendly name is about all this tequila twitter page has to offer its 178 followers unless they’re into historical facts about tequila, such as one of its most recent posts “For many years it was known as “mezcal wine” or “mezcal tequila,” since mezcal or mexcal is another Nahuatl term for agave.”
• @PinkyVodka: Despite this vodka’s small following (only 91), their enthusiastic self-promotion of the “world’s most beautiful vodka” and constant reminders of Pinky-drink ideas lets one know how to get and what to do with this product.
• @Mragave: After reading this site’s post you will know how strong this tequila is- but not much else. With a mere 37 followers, this brand claims to be more popular in “Agave Friendliest States” like CA, TX,NY, IL,FL,AZ, and CO.

Noticeably absent from this list are any Diageo mega-brands like Smirnoff, J&B, Captain Morgan and Johnnie Walker. Since there is no way currently to “age gate” your Twitter followers, perhaps they are simply electing to “keep on walking” rather than risk the potential wrath of watchdog groups. Given the relatively small size of the followings of other spirit brands, at the moment being “ready to Tangueray” need not include tweets.

To succeed in social media, brands would be wise to LIAISE, a six-step process to connect with consumers: Listen, Identify, Activate, Integrate, Socialize, Evaluate.

Really timely article in Adweek this week on how few brands have done well by developing their own Facebook applications from scratch. Many marketers seem to make the same mistakes so here’s a quick do’s and don’t list:

Don’t

• Use isolated tactics. Standalone banner ads or applications don’t seem to work all that well. Relying on “viral effect” alone is foolhardy.
• Make complicated applications. Nike’s Ballers program was simply overwhelming for flitting Facebookers.
• Go it alone. Its hard to build a large audience for a new application given the hundreds out there.
• Stress your message. Overt marketing messages seem to be a major turn off

Do

• Create multi-tiered campaigns. Use advertising to create awareness of the application or whatever utility you plan on bringing to the party.
• Keep it simple. Just try to do one thing well that is fun/useful for your community.
• Look for partners. Microsoft found success on Facebook by working with Slide’s FunSpace app.
• Deliver value first. Once you’ve made friends by being entertaining or useful, then you’ll have a chance to tell your story.

Bottom line—Marketers need to thread the needle between what the community wants (fun, utility) and the brand’s goals (sell their wares).

At The CMO Club Summit today, I moderated a discussion among 35+ CMOs about social media. It was really a lively conversation representing the range of experiences of these CMOs. The group divided into three segments, from novices to making their way to “kicking butt and taking names.” David Spark provides a quick overview of the discussion on TheCMOClub site (yes, the very same social network that Renegade helped create!) but I thought add some more detail given the broad interest in the topic.

Introduction to Social Media
Here’s the definition of social media marketing from Frog Design’s blog that I used to start the discussion:

Social media marketing is all marketing that utilizes the social graph of both marketer and audience (in fact, the interesting thing is that they can be one and the same) to facilitate and cultivate a conversation. Social marketing is whenever more than two individuals collaborate online or offline for content generation and distribution. Social marketers harness the viral power of social networks in order to grow both the frequency and the reach of conversations exponentially. They know how to feed the social orbit with content that catalyzes conversations. And they understand that an “architecture of participation,” that lets employees be marketers, has become paramount for turning brands into live brands.

Social Media Numbers (or why CMO’s should care)

• 62% of consumers actively seek out and read customer reviews prior to purchase
• 82% of consumers found reading reviews better than researching a product in-store
• 60% of Americans use social media
• 59% interact with companies via social media; 25% do so once a week or more
• 93% of those that use SM believe companies should too
• 56% feel stronger connection to companies that they interact with via SMcompanies should use social networks to solve my problems
• 43% believe companies should use social networks to solve my problems
• 41% believe companies should solicit feedback on their products/services
• 37% want more ways to interact with companies

Renegade also created a Social Media IQ test for these CMO’s at CMOquiz.com which may be of interest.