Introduction
When you think of Polar Beverages, you most likely think local. They have been a mainstay on Southbridge Street for decades – longer than any of us have been alive. What you might not know is that Polar Beverages is the country’s largest independent soft-drink bottler and a fourth-generation, family-owned business that traces its roots back to 1882.
In addition to the main production plant in Worcester, Polar owns Adirondack Beverages in Scotia, NY and Polar South, a bottling facility in Fitzgerald, GA. Within the last 6 months, Polar began contracting out to Pepsi Bottling in Olympia, WA to start making and distributing along the west coast. As of today, Polar is distributed in 35 states in the country and works with nearly 90 distributors in the United States alone.
You don’t see commercials for Polar during television events – it’s marketing is largely based upon word-of-mouth recommendations that have slowly created demands in other regions as people moved out of New England and into other states. For example, Polar has a consistently high demand in Florida due to the number of people from New England that want to retire to warmer weather. With such a vast, stable, and growing reach across the country it is important to implement the available social media tools in order to extend that reach, create excitement and harness the groundswell.
However, is Polar still embracing a ‘local’ mindset when they should be acting like a national brand? Do their social media practices prevent them from being able to perform at a higher level?
Platforms
This local purveyor of all things bubbly boasts a wide portfolio of products – at times, perhaps too wide.
Polar Beverages divides their online presence by subcategories: Polar Beverages (main company), Polar Seltzer, Polar Dry, Polar Frost, Polar Classics & the brand new line of Seltzer’ade. For each individual subcategory, an entirely new Website URL and social media handle is created, therefore dividing the company’s portfolio and creating unneeded distance between each subcategory.
Polar Beverages is currently represented on the three major Social Media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Polar does not self-publish any blogs or additional content.The presence of each and number of followers is listed in the table below.
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| Number of Total Followers as of 2/28/17 |
In regards to their activity on Instagram, they are very apt to “like” a post that they are tagged in, but again, fail to address specific inquiries. What I feel works in Polar’s favor is that the stakeholders that do reach out to them are enthusiastic about the products and want to either praise them or inquire about them. Though, in looking into the ‘Visitor Posts’ on their Facebook page, (again, the page with the most followers of any maintained by the company) Polar has not responded to a customer question, comment or complaint on Facebook in months. In fact, I couldn’t find a single post in the last 3.5 months that they responded to. There is of course, the chance that they reply to each person privately but I can’t prove that. In the age of groundswell, I feel it is important to demonstrate your involvement with the pubic, publicly.Analytics
Google Trends
Social Mention
Polar Beverages:
Overall, we see very consistent percentages in the Strength, Passion, and Reach categories as well as a stable ratio of Sentiment at the Polar Brand level. We do notice a jump on the most recent screen capture which I would assume has to do with increased online visibility of the Seltzer’ade brand.
Polar Seltzer:
Again, we see very consistent percentages in the Strength, Passion, and Reach categories as well as a stronger ratio of Sentiment at the Seltzer level on the most recent pull. Similarly, we do notice a jump on the most recent screen capture which I would assume has to do with the recent online visibility of the Seltzer’ade brand.
Technographic Profiles and Engagement
Polar seems to do well in engaging creative individuals with a lot of passion for their products and are able to attract a large number of creators to their social media outlets.
Critics are another section that Polar needs to pay more attention to. The people who they are not responding to online will be the same people that go out and post less than stellar reviews.
Future marketing engagement should involve much more listening and talking, making both creators and critics two of the audiences that should be targeted in order to create a more well-rounded effort to engage the entire groundswell. This would enhance the numbers of joiners and spectators who may be inclined to get more involved at a higher level in the future.
Concluding Thoughts
- Polar is consistently inconsistent. So what do you do when you’ve put yourself in a place where your portfolios are fragmented and you can’t consistently answer to the groundswell?
- There is an extreme disconnect between the Polar Brand and Polar Seltzer. People consistently look to the Brand to find the seltzer rather than just looking to the Seltzer products alone. They are hurting the chances of engagement with the ENTIRE portfolio by suggesting that people should engage with each specific subcategory.
- In my opinion, it would seem that by fragmenting the products so drastically, Polar has not seriously considered or thought out the ways in which they can access the groundswell. By not engaging with the bulk of their followers, they are completely bypassing the listening and the talking phases.
- They have no problem energizing the groundswell – they threw the ‘ade suffix on the word ‘seltzer’ and repackaged pre-existing flavors as new products. They are keenly aware of what creates a buzz.
- Local Brand or National Brand? Polar needs to figure out how to make the transition.