Hardknott Crowd Rewards

This post is about our new rewards engagement scheme, Hardknott Crowd Rewards. No, it's not another crowd funding scheme, indeed it is the exact opposite. You can skip the post below and just hit the link to find out what it's all about.

"Find somewhere with lots of chimney pots" he said. Because smoke makes people want to drink more beer? I have to admit I found the connection between chimneys and a demand for beer somewhat confusing when I initially heard the adage. The confusion only lasted a few seconds as my decaying grey matter caught up with the metaphor. It is the case that for some decades that heavily populated areas no longer rely on open fires to heat houses and chimney pots are indeed artefacts of a bygone age, what with central heating and such like.

It is true, it is much easier to sell beer in areas that have a reasonable population density, like big towns, cities and large conurbations. Hardknott certainly is not located in an area that could be classed as highly populated. Indeed, if we measured the total population we could reach in 30 minutes from our town of Millom and compared to all the other towns in Cumbria we would rank very low indeed, beaten perhaps only by Kirby Stephen¹

Our success at Hardknott has undeniably been as a result of our activities online. Selling outside of Cumbria by reaching out through this blog, Twitter, Facebook and developing a reputation via these means. Selling into city centres via various distribution modes has helped us get where we are.

As the Craft Beer scene matures, as it certainly is doing, and more and more breweries become savvy to the power of social media it becomes more difficult to be heard. Equally, more and more breweries are setting up closer to, or even in the middle of cities. Right there, right where they need to be and very visible to the local populations, especially if they stand on their chimney pots.

On top of that maintaining social media accounts is something of a time-consuming activity. Lately I've been trying to claw-back parts of my life that have been missing over that last 12 years, mainly because my knees will fail me before long and I want to use them whilst they still work. I have rekindled two of my favourite passions lately, mountaineering² and musical theatre³. Doing all of this means that I do not spend all my waking hours tweeting, blogging and makes it more difficult to attend beer events and the like.

So, how to engage with people? How to reach more people and get Hardknott more noticed?

I had an idea a few months back, and I've spent most of my time since developing it. Today I decided it was good enough to launch.

Hardknott Crowd Rewards

Go on, click on the link. I'm hopeful it'll be self explanatory, but it is brand new and we'll be developing it over the next few weeks. Either way, help us out by sharing the love and you might end up with some really great goodies. We've even had some t-shirts made as you can see from the pictures here.


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¹I did consider Kirby Lonsdale and Grange-over-sands in that list, but they are both less than 30 minutes from Kendal. Yes, these places do seem to be listed as towns. I do look at these things as part of my research into development of my business.

²I spent two very glorious weeks in Chamonix this summer. I climbed a mountain called Mont Blanc du Tacul (4248m, my first and hopefully not last 4,000m peak). Next year I hope to summit Mont Blanc itself. The reader is highly unlikely to know just how important this is to me.

³This year I took part in a fantastic musical in Abbey Musical Society production of Barnum. I enjoyed it hugely and was a brilliant diversion from some of the nonsense I have to deal with in the beer world.

Next spring I'm in a production of Cats with the same group. If you have ever seen the show you will understand why I need my knees. I'm playing Alonzo, in case you are interested.