“Cheers!”: How Hendrick’s Gin are mobilising their User Generated Content

The food and drink industry stands amongst the most competitive in terms of winning consumer share of mind, as well as share of wallet. For William Grant & Sons – the independent Scottish distiller that count Hendrick’s Gin and Monkey Shoulder amongst its family of brands – the need to connect with its fans and strengthen its community across digital channels represented a key vehicle for growth.

Now, following a successful six-month trial of StoryStream’s UGC curation technology on the Hendrick’s Gin site, William Grant & Sons has extended the deal to cover other major drinks brands within their portfolio (Grant’s Whisky, Monkey Shoulder, The Balvenie, Tullamore Dew).

William Grant & Sons have selected StoryStream to design and implement content modules that curate and display User-generated Content for its brands, putting the voice of its customer at the heart of its digital communication strategy.

But it goes further still: the streams of social media content come with eCommerce functionality embedded, meaning that surfaced UGC will also help to send traffic to William Grant & Sons’ direct-to-consumer site, Clink. Attributable return on investment from UGC, scaled across William Grant & Sons’ brands.

The stream is already live on the Hendrick’s Gin website, where it has been helping to surface social media content from ‘A Most Delightful Community’ of fans of the premium gin.

“Ideal partners”

Cameron Franks, COO of StoryStream sees a bright future: “I’m confident that Grant’s and StoryStream are going to make ideal partners. Hendrick’s, for example, is a brand which has built a loyal following, and StoryStream’s capacity to surface User Generated Content and boost social media campaigns can help to create a virtuous circle: customers feel ever more engaged with the product, and part of the story around it. The ultimate aim is to create more active advocates, who can enjoy the two-way relationship.”

“We’ll pull in content from end users, handle all of the rights management and stream it to the site, taking a lot of the labour-intensive work away from their marketing department, and ensuring a constantly refreshed carousel of social posts on their homepage.”

StoryStream’s technology creates a direct, measurable chain of links between brand campaigns, customer engagement and sales.

If you’d like to see our innovative, AI-driven platform in action then contact us today for a demo.