By Sean Beckingham

It was near the end of the 2011 Toronto Festival of Beer and I was in the Social Media Lounge.

It had been a whirlwind weekend. Huge bands. The Sheepdogs coming through the lounge. Photos everywhere. Tweets flying. We were trending on Twitter.

Remember when trending on Twitter was a really big deal?

Everything felt a little euphoric.

Then this guy came up to me. I actually thought he was one of the workers.

“You do the Twitter around here?”

“Yup.”

He stuck out his hand.

“I want to hire you.”

That was Peter Bulut, president of Great Lakes Brewery.

And that was pretty much my job interview.

I’d really discovered Great Lakes that weekend. The beers were cool. The packaging was cool. The names were cool. And the beer was amazing.

Their booth was cool too.

The people working it were this eclectic bunch of characters. I can’t remember all their names anymore. There was one long-haired Greek guy who seemed to know absolutely everyone in Toronto and everyone knew him. Wild days at GLB.

They were scrappy.

A family brewery out in Etobicoke doing things their own way.

I liked them.

So when Peter stuck out his hand and said he wanted to hire me, I was in.

I ended up doing their social media for about a year.

And I got paid in cash and beer.

Lots of beer.

For a while I had 24s of Great Lakes beer everywhere. Giving out to everyone who wanted to discover.

This was also around the time they were doing 666 — The Devil Made Me Brew It.

Peter loved to experiment. He had these old cars connected to the personalities of the different beers. There was a K-car, which was funny in a very Canadian way. It was connected to the Crazy Canuck beer.

But 666 had the best one.

A hearse.

With a coffin.

So on Halloween, where do you take a hearse promoting a beer called 666?

Church Street.

We drove it down to the Village on Halloween night. Church Street was packed with people in costumes.

It was perfect.

We’d find people, get them posing with the hearse and coffin, take their picture and give them a beer.

That was social media.

Except there was no iPhone in my pocket capable of shooting everything.

We had an SLR.

Take the photo. Get it off the camera. Get it online.

No Reels. No TikTok. No content creator following us around. No 30-page strategy deck explaining the consumer journey.

We had Church Street on Halloween, a hearse, a coffin, a camera and beer.

And it worked.

At the time I don’t remember thinking we were doing “experiential marketing” or creating “social-first content.”

We were just trying stuff.

Peter was willing to try weird things. I was willing to try weird things. And social media was new enough that nobody really knew what you were supposed to do anyway.

That’s probably what I loved about it.

More than 15 years later, we’ve got better cameras, better data, paid media, creators, algorithms and now AI.

All of that matters.

But you still need the thing that makes somebody stop and say:

That’s cool.

Sometimes that thing is a great piece of creative.

Sometimes it’s an amazing experience.

And sometimes it’s driving a hearse with a coffin down Church Street on Halloween.

— Sean Beckingham, Partner, Branding & Buzzing