Time: Feb 2019 - Feb 2020.
Client: Bootlegger Coffee Company
Project: Marketing strategy to position the business for expansion
Impact: Positioned Bootlegger for long-term growth by building scalable storytelling systems: doubling Instagram followers in a year, and creating guiding principles that ensured the brand’s voice and values carried through every customer touchpoint.

The problem

Three friends opened the first Bootlegger in Sea Point in November 2013, because nowhere else served coffee at 6:30am after their morning ride. By 2019 it had 19 stores in Cape Town and Joburg and roasted 90 to 100 tons of coffee a year. It was a household name, and almost all of that came from word of mouth.

Bootlegger had decided to franchise, and more stores were on the way. But the brand people experienced in the stores – dark, a bit rebellious, built on rock music and good coffee – didn't show up online. The feed looked like several different cafés sharing one account. Store managers had no way to ask for marketing support. And the internal newsletter had stopped.

A growing chain can't rely on everyone just knowing what Bootlegger is. It has to be written down.

What I did

Wrote the brand down. I gave Bootlegger a voice. Male, James Dean-esque. Late thirties, who likes AC/DC, owns a dog and a motorbike, and is never overly excited. No exclamation marks were to be used on social media, nothing salesy or cheesy, and I approved a very short short-list of emojis. Every food and restaurant shot followed one look, black and gold. If your hands were in the frame, you wore black, with black nail polish.

Started the feed again. On 4 March 2019 we archived the old posts and started fresh, with new content pillars, focussing on the roastery, the food, the baristas (#TeamBootlegger) to #DogsOfBootlegger and rock lyrics for captions.

Turned every touchpoint into marketing. We introduced table talkers which changed every three months. Waiters ran competitions to push the product of the month. Even the wifi password did a job: "herecomesthesun" for the summer menu, "beersatbootlegger" in December.

Built a launch playbook. Six stores opened between September and December 2019, in Ferndale, Woodstock Quarter, Upper Kloof, the Two Oceans Aquarium, Kloof 112 and Honeydew. Each one got the same plan: local influencers and food bloggers, neighbourhood outreach, local press, a social launch and brand training for staff. That plan became the marketing section of the franchisee onboarding pack.

Brought people into the stores after dark. Bootlegger owned breakfast and lunch. It didn't own the evening. I ran music nights, including two shows with Fender, Majozi live in Sandton and Gerald Clark in Stellenbosch, plus gin and wine tastings with Hope on Hopkins and Publik. We had over 20 sold-out events that year.

Gave the community reasons to show up. The Tour de Bootlegger: a 173km ride to every Cape Town store in one day. On Mandela Day, we raised R6,137 for Ocean Pledge, the plastic-free accreditation all 20 stores had signed up to. In October we launched the Bootlegger XL, a 500ml cup aimed squarely at Seattle, Vida and Starbucks customers, with an Instagram competition to win coffee for a year.

Fixed internal communications. I brought back the Bootlegger Herald, the staff newspaper, with a competition in every edition. I revived the Barista Champs, moved store managers onto Trello, and built a request form so every GM could ask for marketing support for their own store.

The Results

Instagram: 6,484 to 9,984 followers between March and October 2019, up 54% in seven months. The target was 46% in a full year.
Twitter: monthly impressions grew from 7,200 in February 2019 to 31,600 in May, and engagement doubled from 0.7% to 1.4%
Stores: six new stores launched in four months on one playbook
Events: 20 events held, all sold out.

By the end of twelve months, Bootlegger had a strong, identifiable brand identity, a content and story pipeline, doubled social media following, a franchisee marketing playbook, and a replicable events system, everything in place to support their ambitious growth.