“The Milokleftis project!”
Attending the course of “Introduction to advertising and public relations” in university, we were asked to work on a specific project, related to public relations and advertisement, as a task, every week during the semester. Our first task was to act as brand ambassadors of any big, small, famous or less famous brand of our choice, make our research about the brand and present our work to the rest of the group.
After thinking of it, together as a team, we came up with the idea of representing as brand ambassadors a well-known brand in Greece — especially among the youth — , “Milokleftis”, an apple cider! Now let’s get to the point and say a few words about the brand and the product itself…
As mentioned already, “Milokleftis”, or “Apple bandit”, in English — which in Greek actually means the one who steals apples — is the brand of the first Greek apple cider. It is a very popular and successful product in Greece, since from 2014 till now, it has gained from 1% to 5% of the Greek market.
Making a research about the product and the brand, from the past till now, we discovered a very interesting story. Despite the fact that now the product is considered Greek, initially it was imported and brought in the Greek market by the Athenian brewery. All of that, because of an old law, a royal decree from 1922, which didn’t allow the use of fruit in the production of alcoholic drinks and beverages. This law was finally cancelled in 2017, the year in which, the production of “Milokleftis” cider started in the factory of Patras.
Still, though, “Milokleftis” can’t be considered a totally Greek product, because the raw material, the apples used for its production, are imported in Greece from Slovenia. 2019 is supposed to be the wear when the cultivation of the special variety of apples needed for the cider production, is going to start in Greece, creating a lot of new places of occupation.
But why did we chose this brand among others?
Not only because we like drinking this cider (!), but also because we really liked their strategy, their well-organized marketing and public relations that are oriented around young people. Apart from that, their well designed website and active social media presence with cool hashtags like the now famous #followthefox, really amazed us. By taking a look at their website or their instagram you can understand that this brand is very promising and obtains a growing market in Greece. By visiting the site, you are also able to get information about the production of cider, contact the company through social media or watch the official commercial clip of the product in Greek. Or you can have a taste of it here in English! We think that you’ll like it, since it has such a playful and intelligent story!
Our favorite part from the brand’s marketing, are the gamification techniques they use to promote and advertise their product. Apart from the back-story scenario seen in the advertisement trailer, which resembles the narrative of movies or video games, the brand has the moto and hashtag #followthefox, which they used as a clue/hint to lead people to a street party they organized in three different parts of the city, last summer. So the announcement about the parties didn’t contain any specific place and the interested ones had to “play treasure hunt”, finding relevant posters on several corners of the city, on the streets, and “follow the fox” to get to the fun part, where they could have a great time with music and cider! So this gave the brand the opportunity to get known to the public and also win their trust.
Another way they used to promote themselves was to take part in Rock-wave festival in Athens, where they had small cantinas to offer cider to the people who attended the festival.
Overall, our team believes that “Milokleftis” company sees promotion, advertising and marketing through a very modern and fresh point of view and they never seem to rest with their ideas, just like the target group they aim for, the youngsters, who always like to be in motion and try new things and experiences!
