The challenge: To support Australia’s pubs during lockdown, Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) and the Australian Hotels Association (AHA) came up with the ‘For the Love of Your Local’ initiative.

The campaign aimed to generate immediate cashflow for venues by encouraging people to buy 2-for-1 beer vouchers whilst the bars were closed, which they could redeem at their chosen local when they reopened. Their target was to raise a hefty $2M!

What CUB required our help with, was a redemption system. Sounds simple, but actually a real challenge given the initiative included 2000+ venues countrywide with varying POS systems. We needed a single-minded solution that would work across all venues, which would also become a platform solution that could then be used campaign after campaign.

The idea: Our system had to get over 150,000+ vouchers to their buyers in a format that all customers could access, and all bars, from community locals to small chains, could operate within their specific POS systems. It needed to be easy-to-implement, platform agnostic, and have the ability to be rolled out nationally – a seemingly impossible task, made possible by the power of Virtual Atoms (VAs).

The solution: Virtual Atoms are created on a platform that allows the distribution of infinite digital tokens into the virtual-sphere. They can take the form of literally anything, and are built on a blockchain platform, so they have a true value, in this instance – 2 beers at your local.

This is how it worked:

Beer lovers bought their vouchers from the ‘Love of Your Local’ website and a link was emailed to their inbox. Clicking the link gave them access to a ‘mobile wallet’ containing the digital beers they had bought. When they visited their selected bar after lockdown, they could ‘tap’ on a beer in their inventory to redeem a voucher. Tapping launched the customer’s camera, so they could scan the printed QR codes on bar POS, transferring ownership from the consumer’s wallet to the venue, as the bar staff served them their cold one.

Making it extraordinary: The VA platform allowed us to solve a very real business challenge that many clients with a client base of independents face. As the system is smart, and reported redemptions in live time, it was a completely measurable, data-rich redemption solution that connected 2100 bars with over 30,000 beer lovers across the country in a user, and venue-friendly way.

The system launched on a Friday night, and at one point a beer was being redeemed every second. And at the time of writing this, CUB had raised over $1.8M with the campaign, and were getting closer to their $2M target by the day!

Cheers to that!

For more information on what blockchain and Virtual Atoms can do for your brand get in touch. We can chat for days about the endless possibilities, but we’ll keep it focused. Promise.

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