CASE STUDY: DULUTH CIDER
COVID SHUTDOWN
Every Small Business in America Went Online at Once. How Do You Cut Through The Noise?
BACKGROUND
COVID shutdowns hit in March 2020, which meant businesses like Duluth Cider, whose survival depended primarily on gathering people inside their building, had to scramble to find a new way forward.
Meanwhile customers were scared, isolated, and eager to find a way to connect with their neighbors while gathering in person was off the table.
The Problem
As shutdowns rolled over the country’s small businesses, it became immediately clear that the only way to reach customers with your message was online. So how could Duluth Cider cut through the noise and create real-world results while every single small business in America was also clamoring for attention?
THE SOLUTION
We started out with the 5 questions I bring to every marketing problem:
1. What is the goal?
To cut through the noise of every small business scrambling online at once by offering something authentic that met people’s felt needs, not just another pitch dressed up as content.
2. Who is the right audience?
Statewide distribution wasn’t slated to launch until July 2020, so Duluth Cider’s only stream of income was taproom sales. That meant the right audience were those who could physically come taproom’s hastily-installed “Cider To Go” window. In short, we had to reach Duluth.
3. What do they care about?
This was a very emotional time for all of us, so our customers’ needs were simple and immediate: they were scared so they wanted comfort and familiarity, and they were isolated so they were actively searching for new ways to meaningfully connect with their community.
4. Where do they spend their time?
Same as the rest of us: at home on the couch, online, filling their time by scrolling Facebook and YouTube for something that felt real, not just another ad.
5. How do we reach them there?
By delivering comfort and connection, and giving people whose social calendars were suddenly empty something concrete to look forward to.
The answer was obvious: a livestreamed event. But we also knew livestreams would inevitably and quickly become just part of the noise: everyone and their grandmother knew how to set their phone on a chair and hit “Go Live”.
For this to actually pay off we needed to be the first ones out of the gate, and we needed to go big.
We immediately reached out to local singer-songwriter Charlie Parr. Charlie is a locally-beloved musician who became Duluth-famous by gathering huge crowds at his residencies every Wednesday night in the late 2000s and early 2010s. His music and his character were familiar, comforting, and instantly recognizable.
We booked Charlie to livestream from the Duluth Cider stage the very next Wednesday — March 25, 2020. Our offer to Charlie, a touring musician who suddenly had no source of income, was this: rather than paying him a performance fee, we would create a GoFundMe link that would run on-screen and in the comments so viewers could support Parr directly, framed as a digital version of passing the hat.
Production was simple by design: two pro-level cameras, one on a tripod and one handheld, live-switched by the venue’s sound engineer, and streamed simultaneously to Facebook and YouTube.
Parr performed alone in an empty room, on a dimly but warmly lit stage with the Duluth Cider logo behind him.
The Results
More than 64,000 people tuned in live. In 90 minutes Parr’s GoFundMe brought in a staggering amount (which we won’t share here).
Viewers posted their own videos of themselves, their families, even their pets, watching and singing along in their living rooms.
The Duluth News Tribune covered it glowingly at the time, then again in months later in December, both times calling it one of Duluth’s best music moments:
“This might be among Duluth’s most magical music moments.” — Duluth News Tribune, March 2020
“It remains one of the top 1 hour, 38 minutes of music created in the past year.” — Duluth News Tribune, December 2020
The story was covered by not only local and statewide news outlets like the Star Tribune, but it surprisingly garnered national media attention. The day after the livestream The Washington Times featured Jake and the livestream/GoFundMe concept in a national story on small businesses adapting during COVID, alongside the newly launched to-go window and delivery service.
This created such a drastic upswing in taproom to-go sales that Duluth Cider was nearly unable to handle the volume for weeks after the show.
That year Duluth Cider was voted the Duluth News Tribune readers’ 3rd-best venue in the city — behind only Bayfront Festival Park and the DECC, both massive venues in comparison.