About Archer Roose

Archer Roose Collective is a Boston-based, female-founded and led wine brand that produces worldly wines for the curious in planet-friendly formats. With a passion for travel and a penchant for adventure, Archer Roose’s mission is to deliver high-quality wine varietals imported from the world’s most iconic international winemaking regions to consumers at an accessible price point. The brand is perhaps best known for its eco-friendly alternative packaging, with the most popular format being aluminum cans.

Mission

Cliffhanger began working with Archer Roose in April 2019,just as the popularity of canned format alcoholic beverages such as spiked seltzer began to skyrocket. Archer Roose’s already-impressive growth trajectory reached new heights in 2019, leading to the regional brand seeing its retail presence grow on a national level, which Cliffhanger was able to leverage by generating a pipeline of top tier media results, bringing the brand’s canned wine into the mainstream.

Over the course of the year, Archer Roose debuted numerous new partnerships with nationally recognized entities, such as the Museum of Ice Cream and SummerStage. However, perhaps none of these collaborations possessed the combination of national visibility and industry cache that January 2020 had in store for the brand: an official partnership with JetBlue to make Archer Roose’s Sauvignon Blanc varietal the first-ever canned wine served aboard the airline’s flights, and one of the first ever in-flight canned wines in history.

A strategic partnership of this magnitude possesses the power to alter the brand’s future and springboard a company into becoming a category leader. Given the significance of this opportunity, Archer Roose understood the need for a meticulously crafted media launch strategy. With a goal of saturating the brand’s target markets and exposing Archer Roose to core audiences across the country, the company looked to Cliffhanger to make this happen.

To transform this goal into a reality, Cliffhanger kicked off development of a multi-phased, full-scale media launch strategy for Archer Roose’s JetBlue debut, designed to kick off in Q4 and culminate with an official widespread launch announcement introducing the partnership, once Archer Roose’s Sauvignon Blanc was officially being served on JetBlue flights.

Approach

Cliffhanger recognized that there were several layers of nuance and deeper thinking that inherently existed with this news which would be vital to communicate on behalf of both Archer Roose and JetBlue. Specifically, Archer Roose is an emerging yet still relatively unknown brand in the global spotlight, and JetBlue is an established brand that adheres firmly to the principles and practices that it is passionate about – quality, sustainability, and unparalleled customer service. The world needed to know why these two brands were a natural match for one another, not just merely that they were coming together for a shared benefit.

As such, the agency worked in tandem with JetBlue comms team to roll out an impactful and tightly-messaged launch campaign that communicated the brand synergy and motivation behind the union of both brands, centered on three core principles: a pursuit of high-quality, worldly wines, a penchant for adventure, and a devotion to sustainable packaging and earth-friendly practices.

Execution

Cliffhanger crafted a phased approach for the partnership’s PR launch that was carried out across a strict timeline and reached every corner of the desired media stratosphere:

Phase 1: Exclusive Story Outreach

·      To kick off the communications cadence and ensure that the partnership news reached the public for the first time through a highly-regarded media outlet, Cliffhanger worked with the JetBlue team to shop an “exclusive” story opportunity to break the news of the JetBlue partnership to a select handful of strategically-selected, tier one media publications.

·      Cliffhanger devised compelling story hooks that would cut through the clutter and grab the attention of our top contacts, with unique angles such as: “How JetBlue Found Its ‘Spirit Animal’ in Archer Roose,” “These Women Put Canned Wine on a Plane,” “Reducing Carbon Footprint, One Can of Wine at a Time.”

Phase 2: Media Mailers and Pre-Launch Outreach

·      To drive awareness about the partnership amongst Archer Roose’s top tier media targets and get them excited about the launch, Cliffhanger compiled a list of 25 target contacts that were handpicked to receive a custom, personalized and sustainable Archer Roose x JetBlue mailer kit, designed to serve as a fun and interactive channel to highlight the partnership and reinforce the synergy between the brands.

·      For a controlled and effective pre-launch outreach leading up to the official launch, these mailers were shipped out simultaneously, serving as compelling touchpoints for media mindshare of the partnership prior to the announcement. Being able to sip Archer Roose and learn of the partnership was essential in helping media contacts get a head start on developing launch day coverage, a primary goal for the brand.

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Phase 3: Press Release and Widespread Announcement Distribution

·      When launch day finally arrived, Cliffhanger worked with Archer Roose to deploy a widespread, mass-market announcement to the media alongside distribution of an official co-branded press release. Cliffhanger spearheaded comprehensive launch-day outreach to thousands of broadcast, online, and print media contacts spanning the full spectrum of relevant verticals, including consumer travel, national lifestyle, women’s interest, food & beverage, wine trade publications, and national news outlets.

Phase 4: Continued Follow-Up and Influencer Campaign

·      Seeking to support the launch with a comprehensive effort that drives continuous cascading media coverage in the weeks and months to come, Cliffhanger continued to conduct media follow-up outreach.

·      With Archer Roose’s Rosé slated to supplant Sauvignon Blanc on JetBlue in the spring, Cliffhanger developed an equally robust earned media push around the news, garnering a groundswell of top tier media interest.

·      To continue driving momentum for the partnership well into the spring, Cliffhanger, Archer Roose and JetBlue collectively understand the importance of social media in the prolonged success of the collaboration. Cliffhanger orchestrated a strategic paid and organic influencer campaign, just as JetBlue is transitioning from Archer Roose’s Sauvignon Blanc to its Rosé varietal. The campaign centered on leveraging influencers that combine a passion for travel and adventure with an enthusiasm for wine and environmentally conscious causes.

Results

The phased PR rollout developed by Cliffhanger proved to be instrumental in saturating the news cycle with coverage of Archer Roose x JetBlue’s partnership, earning coverage in notable outlets including Forbes, Travel + Leisure, Delish, PASTE Magazine, The Points Guy, FOX News, Yahoo! Lifestyle, MSN, CBS News, SmartBrief and more – all on launch day alone. The multi-faceted pre-launch approach positioned Cliffhanger for continued media success by creating a pipeline of future secured coverage for Archer Roose, including upcoming opportunities with Bloomberg News, Bustle, AdWeek, Food +Wine, Architectural Digest, and more.

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Notable Successful Metrics Include:

·      967,000,000 cumulative program impressions

·      175+ total published placements within first 10 months of client-agency partnership

·      487,669,950 online impressions for JetBlue partnership announcement alone

·      37 placements for JetBlue partnership announcement alone