Hipsterville Calling

"We put our beer, at the beginning, into the right places, hitting the right people, to drink our beer and they liked it," recalls VP Sales and Marketing Chuck Galea about the early days of Side Launch in 2014. "In Toronto, what they call 'hipsterville,' our beer was reaching to those people's hands. And when that beer gets into someone's hands, and someone across the room sees them holding our can, they're like 'I want that, I'll give that a try. That looks interesting.'"

Chuck has as good a compass on the Side Launch target market as anyone at the brewery. Having spent decades in sales, most of it in beer sales, he is an astute observer of human behavior and a captive audience member of how it plays out from day to day. This knowledge has been strategically siphoned toward a fairly accurate depiction of the typical Side Launch drinkerits target market. This is not to be confused with the craft beer segment, an exponentially growing number of people switching from big beer to craft. Just as every craft brewery attempts to differentiate based on a unique value proposition, it targets that offering at a specific type of consumer, whose frequency of use is hopefully large enough to make a profitable product. How a brand is perceived by both current and prospective consumers depends on its position. But while segmenting, targeting, and positioning are designed by the producer, it is sometimes the target market that describes the position.

"This year [2017] we're getting approached to sponsor all these music and arts [events] and showcases. I'm being told 'Wow, we really want Side Launch at our event, because you are a hip brand,'" Chuck says with a laugh. "It's funny because I would never picture ourselves as that." And yet it would seem to some of its target market that Side Launch is "hip," which can't be a bad thing.

Despite the theory that segmentation has four dimensions (geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioural), the only one that really matters at the end of the day is the one that segments people based on what they wantwhich is the behavioural dimension. What is the benefit Side Launch drinkers seek? "Craft beer drinkers want better tasting beer," says Chuck of the craft beer segment. "Side Launch drinkers, those in Ontario, want not only craft, but only local. They want to be engaged through grassroots communication. They want to know the story of the brewery and each beer. They're interested in food pairings and beer dinners, right? They're not in it for a piss-up. To them, it's like wine ... to be savoured and enjoyed and appreciated for the quality that goes into it."

But there's another aspect to the Side Launch target market that is not obvious, given the stereotype of a beer drinker. "This [Collingwood/Blue Mountain] area is incredibly active," explains Chuck. "It's Blue Mountains skiing and mountain biking, and camping or vacationing in cottage country with your boat ... you know, hiking and cycling, and we have associated ourselves with active people as well." In its growing product mix of merchandise, Chuck points to high-end cycling apparel bearing the Side Launch branding. "I think to myself, who's going to spend [$150] on a cycling jacket or tights?" he says with a self-effacing smirk, acknowledging his larger-than-average-cyclist structure. (Chuck is a big man.) "But you know what, we can't keep them on the shelves. So we have successfully identified ourselves with that fit, health-conscious, active psychographic as well."

Questions

Side Launch Question 4.1

Do some online research on Toronto's "Hipsterville" and describe the segment frequenting this district, along all four segmentation dimensions (geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioural).