Cheshire family brewers Robinsons are launching Iron Maiden’s new Trooper ale, developed and produced with a ‘hands on’ approach from lead singer Bruce Dickinson. This is the brewers second move in developing a beer in conjunction with a global band and follows the earlier launch of ‘Elbow’.
This is a unique approach to launching new
products explained David Bremner,
Robinsons’ Director of Marketing as Bruce
Dickinson (left) has been heavily involved in
the development of the beer:
“It’s basically his recipe, taste profile and ABV
and probably the clearest brief our Head
Brewer has ever had and a great partnership
for us. Iron Maiden is a huge band – they have
8.6 million Facebook followers with up to
200,000 talking about them at any one time.
They just sold 240,000 tickets for 3 tour dates
in Brazil in a day! Then there’s how involved
they are on a daily basis- it’s amazing the
doors that open when the band’s manager
calls. He even got us into Parliament ! Finally,
it takes a lot of work at our end – we have a
marketing team doing little else but managing
expectations and dealing with sales
opportunities. It’s a fine line to build
anticipation of a launch without annoying fans
who are desperate to drink it.”
This has meant Robinsons have secured orders with several export countries including USA; before anyone has tasted the beer they are in discussion with over 100 countries through export partners Sovereign and have presold 250,000 pints in the UK alone.
Even before launch Trooper is already one of the most “followed” beers in the UK with over 42,000 on Facebook.
David commented further:
“Facebook doesn’t sell beer unfortunately, but considering we haven’t let anyone taste it yet this is a promising start. We are brewing three times a day six days a week for the first time ever in our 175 year history and we already have the first 20,000 cases ready to go out by post as well as several export orders.”
The launch of Trooper ale is following a unique and unusual route to take a new brand to their customers as Robinsons haven’t spent any budget allocated on advertising and it is Iron Maiden’s fans who are acting as the Robinsons sales force. In an unusaul twist, it is the pub customers who are creating the demand directly from the pubs who then feed the message up through the supply chain.
Pre-orders are also being taken for Trooper in bottle online to be delivered circa 9th May.