Fellow beer enthusiast, Brady Walen is a marketing professional & blogger based in Portland Oregon. Brady has a tremendous website in Craftedsocialmedia which helps breweries, brewpubs, taprooms, bottle shops and event organizers use social media to talk, listen, and connect with beer drinkers.  If you like beer as much as he does, he is willing to help you out.  Crafted can help every step of the way. Brady engages the twitter community using the following twitter handle: @getcrafted  along with this official website, here.

Pull up bar stool and enjoy this round by Brady:

That’s right.  Miller High Life “is looking for qualified individuals [in India] who embody and endorse the spirit of the brand – ‘Work Hard, Party Hard’” to fill a position it’s calling The Coolest Job in the World.  The contest does have a website (appropriately found at www.thecoolestjob.com), but it centers on aFacebook page built specifically for the campaign.  It’s all part of Miller High Life’s entry strategy into the India market.  There aren’t many requirements in terms of job qualifications; applicants need to be of age and need to be willing to spread the word about Miller High Life during the application process and, for the lucky winner, after a candidate has been awarded the coolest job in the world.  Oh yeah, and the winner will be paid Rs 1,00,000 per month, which is roughly $2,100 US dollars.  Not bad for someone who can maintain their day job and promote the beer brand after work during the work week.

Best Media Info offered some additional details about the campaign from Miller High Life:

A collaborative effort between the creative partners and us led to this idea that is based on four key principles…A) To be disruptive yet relevant, in a category where most brand launches are usually formulaic. b) To reach out to people who genuinely connect with the brand’s philosophy, even without the brand reveal. C) Unlike other platforms on social networks where people follow brands than the ethos. D) To make the brand promise experiential than simply limiting it to clever advertising.

According to the article, the campaign was initially launched as a teaser campaign without mention of the brand association.  Since then, it’s become known that the coolest job will be a position with Miller High Life.

The Facebook page built for the campaign has several social features worth noting.  First of all, the welcome page requires that visitors “like” The Coolest Job page to find out more about the position and the contest.  While some consumers and marketers don’t appreciate companies using the Facebook like button as a gateway to accessing additional content, the strategy seems to be working for Miller High Life with this campaign — as of now, the brand has already attracted 85k+ Facebook fans.

From there, a screen reveals some basic info about the coolest job along with the video (embedded above) and a link to the campaign’s Facebook application.  And this is where the campaign really gets interesting.  Each applicant creates his or her unique social profile within the app which has several social share features and the ability to connect via other social media platforms as well.  Also, take note of the “vote for me” badge, complete with embed code so applicants can easily post it to their websites and blogs

One of the most interesting aspects of The Coolest Job campaign is the fact that applicants are challenged to complete a series of missions in order to “get closer to the coolest job.”  Not surprisingly, the missions (or at least the first one) requires that the applicant gets five “votes” from their social network to advance in the process; this obviously requires that the applicant shares the campaign and the brand with their social networks, which only helps generate additional awareness about Miller High Life in its new market.  The series of missions will keep users engaged and invested throughout the process.

The app also features a “messages” tab that simply offers the Twitter stream for The Coolest Job.  Given that each applicant creates a profile, I expected that the messages feature would allow for personal messages to be passed to/from the brand and other applicants, but including the Twitter stream within the app adds one more level of engagement for users.  It also looks like Miller High Life is trying to gain some traction with the use of the #thecoolestjob hashtag.

Like most good social media campaigns from beer companies, The Coolest Job campaign also has an offline component.  As an example, check out this Facebook update from Miller High Life:

All you folks in Mumbai and Pune this is your chance to experience the Miller High Life. Give your weekend a power-boost! Tonight head to Karma Lounge, Tavern, Panache, Firangi paani, Tian or Kino in Mumbai and Paprika hot, High Spirits, Prems Swig or Scream in Pune. Spot the Miller girls and shout out ‘It’s Miller Time’ to play the Miller iPad game and taste ‘The Champagne of beers’.  Do send us your feedback and post your party pictures on the wall.

Miller High Life is using Facebook to promote offline engagement with the brand.  While we’ve all seen campaigns where consumers are invited to seek out a brand’s representative –in this case, the Miller girls– it’s interesting to see that Miller is using iPad games as means to further engage consumers that do shout out ‘It’s Miller Time.’

The Bottom Line

As a market entry strategy, The Coolest Job campaign looks to be accomplishing its objective of spreading awareness about Miller High Life among the brand’s target market — 25 to 35 year olds living in urban environments; this is, after all, the market segment most likely to “work hard, party hard.”   While we don’t necessarily know how many people are fighting for the position by way of completing missions and asking for their friends’ votes, we do know that the campaign has attracted 85k+ Facebook fans; Miller High Life, on the other hand, is collecting quite a bit of information from applicants that it can use in future marketing, outreach and/or research efforts.  As the campaign gains attention, so does the brand.  And all the while, Miller High Life is offering applicants and anyone else looking to “work hard, party hard” several opportunities to engage with the brand — both online and offline.  Once the job is awarded, it’ll be interesting to see how Miller High Life promotes the winner and how it will continue to promote the “work hard, party hard” brand experience.