bearmilk diaries

Holland HopCraft’s corporate market response to backlash in the United States

For an assignment during the course Corporatre Marketing Communication, specifically focussing on crisis communication. This case revolves around the imaginary brand Holland Hopcraft, a beer company, which faced backlash in the United States after the brand openly voiced their support for LGBTQ+ rights. Resulting in the withdrawal of Holland Hopcraft’s products from the biggest supermarkets in the US and loud outcry on social media. In response to this incident, a communication strategy (group) and artefact (individual) were created to help Holland Hopcraft preventing similar cases in the Netherlands

The main advice is to keep advertisements for the involved stakeholder groups: LGBTQ+ supporters and conservative group seperated. The backlash was said to be caused by Holland HopCrafts open support for LGBTQ+ rights, but unfortualy reached the the wrong audience as beer consumers are commonly conservative, resulting in a boycott. It is suggested to seperate stakeholder groups by producing different beer can designs for each group and promoting them at events which they are likely to attend. In this case, it would be Pride pride events for LGBTQ+ supporters, and sportsbars during this year’s (2024) European Foorball Champoinship. The promotions feature a beer can with a design personalised to its audience and a matching banner as a communication artefact. These artefact feature elements inspired by previous research to induce positive attitudes toward the promotion, beer can designs, and Holland HopCraft as a brand. This includes using elements such as colors that align with the audience, imagery that seem favorable, and words that are linked with positivity.

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Informing patients with a mental health disorder and psychiatrists about having a conversation about family planning

This is a research project that I have partaken in with 4 other fellow students during my minor in More Healthy Years at the university of Groningen. As part of project DOEN, an initiative to improve practices with unintentional pregnancies and parenthood in combination with psychological vulnerability. There was a client from the departement of psychiatry at the UMCG with a question of how to make the topic of family planning more open to discussion, since there seemed to be a taboo around it.

We looked atexisting literature regarding our topic from different perspectives to gain insight on the importance of discussing family planning with a mental health professional, and to get a better understanding of mental health disorders in combination with pregnancy and parenthood. The knowledge gathered here then inspired some questions for interviews with mental health patients and mental health professionals. From these interviews, we gathered that patients would like to talk about family planning, but that the mental health professional should initiate the conversation. The mental health professionals that we got in contact with did agree that family planning should be spoken about with psychologists and psychiatrists. Personas were created of a patient and a psychiatrist to help invision our end-users. Along with that a customer journey of the patient and psychiatrist together during a psychiatry session as we found this setting to be perfect to target both patient and psychiatrist. Personas and customer journeys were checked by a patient and psychiatrist to maintain quality.

We determined that our product should follow 3 criteria. 1) it should target patients and psychiatrists 2) nudge patients and psychiatrists and 3) be an object. We came up with several prototypes and ideas and asked some psychiatrists in Groningen, some previous contacts, and family and friends for their opinion. Eventually, it lead to a tissue box cover with a manual. As tissue boxes are already commonly placed in a psychiatrists office and also used, it is sure to be seen by both psychiatrists and patients. On the box is a quote along with fitting imagery that intends to make the viewer think of familyplanning. The manual contains information for the psychiatrist about why family planning might be a valuable topic to discuss with their patients. Both items were given to our client along with an detailed action plan of how to test these products. Our client expressed satisfaction with our products and took our plan into consideration.