Known for its root beer and old-style German aesthetic, Sprecher Brewing Co. may not seem the type of company to dip an early toe into blockchain-based technology.
But with a new CEO intent on growing the brand, a contingent of digital-native Sprecher fanatics and the push from a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee disruptive technologies faculty member, the company envisions a world where Sprecher enthusiasts can engage with the brand in the metaverse.
Sprecher is exploring the possibility of leveraging non-fungible tokens (NFTs) — digital assets secured on the blockchain that can be sold and traded — as a marketing tool. The company has already test-minted its first NFT, a digital version of its logo, through a partnership with UWM.
"People will pay a lot of money for a Sprecher sign," Sprecher Brewing director of communications Tim Cigelske said. "People will do the same thing with the online space — it's just another place to collect and show original material."
The idea for Sprecher NFTs originated with Matthew Friedel, a senior lecturer at UWM, co-founder of the university's Disruptive Technologies Lab and vice president of Milwaukee Venture Partners, a local angel investing group of which Sprecher Brewing CEO and president Sharad Chadha is a member.
Friedel, who has an interest in the space, casually pitched the idea to Chadha and assigned one of his graduate students, Shilpa Pradeep Tiwari, the task of minting the first Sprecher NFT to show Chadha and his team what was possible. Chadha was open to the idea.
"We have to speak in different languages, if you will, to different consumers," said Chadha, a UWM alumnus. "Some just talk digital, and we're learning that."
After buying Glendale-based Sprecher Brewing in early 2020 and taking over as its CEO, Chadha started becoming aware of mega Sprecher fans, including customers with Sprecher logo tattoos, he said.
Given examples of these deeply committed brand loyalists, Cigelske believes there will be an interest in Sprecher NFTs from a certain segment of the company's customers, including gamers with followings on sites like Reddit, Twitter and the live streaming platform Twitch.
"We saw a huge spike one day in our website traffic at 3 a.m. on a Saturday," Cigelske said. "It was a Twitch user with 15,000 followers showing his (Sprecher) Orange Dream soda into his Twitch stream."
There's precedent for beer-industry use of NFTs, Cigelske added. In late November, Anheuser-Busch launched a Budweiser NFT collection that sold out in less than an hour.
Sprecher is still working on its NFT strategy, which Cigelske said will involve experimentation to find the right approach for the right audience. The company could make its NFT debut as early as March, around St. Patrick's Day, alongside the official launch of its recently acquired Green River soda, Cigelske said.
Friedel said he sees potential for Sprecher to pair digital assets with tangible products or in-person experiences. For instance, Sprecher could offer an exclusive brewery tour to the first NFT buyers, or run a raffle where customers buy Sprecher soda for a chance to win a Sprecher NFT.
Regardless of how Sprecher executes its entrance into the NFT space, Chadha believes the company's future will include both digital and analog realms.
"The world is becoming one, in this metaverse or whatever happens," Chadha said. "We'll not know when we've gone from virtual to real and back, and we've got to be there."
