This story is by Joel Gorthy of Oregon Quarterly:

Talk about a beer buzz.

In barely four years of existence, Ninkasi Brewing Company of Eugene has grown into Oregon’s seventh-largest brewery—no paltry feat in a state where icons such as Widmer, Deschutes, and Full Sail cap a roster of some eighty beer producers.

What’s more, the upstart brewery’s Total Domination IPA is the top-selling twenty-two-ounce bottled beer in the state.

And in the Eugene-Springfield area, Ninkasi products are available on draft or in bottles at almost 90 percent of the businesses where beer is sold, according to the brewery.

“One of my goals was what I call the ‘Chico-fication’ of Eugene,” says co-owner Jamie Floyd ’94, who studied sociology at the UO. “You go to Chico [California], and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company is part of the identity of the people. If Bend and Hood River and Newport are all going to have these big regional breweries, too, it’s cool that we can provide that for Eugene.”

But the hoppy hubbub that radiates from the Whiteaker-neighborhood brewhouse also has spawned burgeoning beer sales across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska. Along with Total Domination, Ninkasi’s Believer Double Red Ale and Tricerahops Double IPA are among the top fifteen in the nation in the category of new bottled craft beers, according to supermarket scan data.

Floyd and partner Nikos Ridge have bucked the odds in an industry saturated in competition for tap handles and shelf space, but on their side is a buzz-marketing machine that pumps out swells of growth.

“What we do best is get in on the grassroots level, build brand awareness on the underground, and use that as leverage to bring product to people’s attention,” Floyd says. This brand-building approach involves extensive use of social media sites such as Twitter and guerrilla tactics that include using a Batman-style light projector to cast a towering Ninkasi logo onto prominent buildings.

All the touting, twitting, and bat-lighting have helped propel Ninkasi’s production growth from 2,200 barrels in 2007 to 7,800 barrels in 2008, then to 17,000 barrels in 2009. Floyd expects output to reach 30,000 barrels in 2010, and the company is building a facility with 90,000-barrel capacity.

Brian Butenschoen, executive director of the Oregon Brewers Guild, describes Ninkasi’s ascent as “phenomenal . . . A number of other breweries have opened up in the last ten years, but none that has grown like Ninkasi.”

As a result, “we’re seeing sales and marketing teams at other breweries trying to copy us,” Floyd claims. “That’s the biggest compliment we can get at our young age, that the big dogs are afraid of us.”

In a small office next to a new tasting room, James Book and Winter Gibbs ’09 spend their days brewing buzz via Facebook, Twitter, and rock ’n’ roll.

Book, Ninkasi’s marketing director, tasted the rock-star life as bass player in his former band, The Flys, which scored a top-five hit in 1998 with “Got You (Where I Want You).” Today he owns topsecret, a record label and production company. At a studio in the brewery’s new offices, Book also will record, produce, and promote Ninkasi-sponsored bands.

Working with Book is Gibbs, Ninkasi’s viral marketing specialist, who has a degree from the UO School of Journalism and Communication with an emphasis in creative advertising.

“Not that many breweries have a computer geek on staff specifically for social networking,” says Floyd, who used MySpace in the brewery’s early days to connect with pubs, music venues, bands, and fans.

Today Gibbs continuously nurtures Ninkasi’s expanding online neighborhood, whether at his office computer or on the road with his iPhone. “I use Facebook as my base platform, and I have it set up to post back to Twitter,” Gibbs says. He also receives alerts when anyone writes about Ninkasi on those sites or elsewhere on the web. “Some people don’t even know we have a Twitter feed, and I can go directly to them, answer their question, and get them in the loop.”

Almost 6,000 people are fans of Ninkasi on Facebook (www.facebook.com/ninkasibrewing) and some 1,600 follow it on Twitter (twitter.com/ninkasi). They receive updates regarding new beers, tasting events, concerts by sponsored bands, and more.

Sometimes Ninkasi mobilizes its followers to wield influence in the real world—say, to ask en masse for its beers at a certain bar—and in cyberspace. Last November, fans helped convince blogger Jay Brooks (brookstonbeerbulletin.com) that Ninkasi belonged on his list of the past decade’s top ten new breweries.

Social networking yields tangible marketing advantages for the brewery, too, such as the detailed fan demographics in Facebook’s weekly “Insights” report. “When we enter a new marketplace, we can track the relative consciousness and vibe,” and use that to decide when to invest in print advertising or sponsorships, Floyd explains.

“We started our business right around the rise of social networking . . . and there’s an argument that there’s no way we could have broken the 15,000-barrel barrier in under four years without this sort of tool.”

Kim Sheehan, professor of advertising in the School of Journalism and Communication, coauthored a 2008 book, Building Buzz to Beat the Big Boys, with Steve O’Leary ’69. In it, they advise small business owners how to harness the power of word of mouth.

Consumers today want more information, control, and choice, and businesses can serve these needs with an online community that fosters dialogue, the authors note.

Engaging customers in this way has boosted Ninkasi, Floyd says. “We benefit from the honesty of it, and people feel like they have played a part in our growth. The beer is good, but we’re involved in their lives.”

Sheehan and O’Leary also urge business owners to take certain marketing risks to ferment positive word of mouth for their brands.

Floyd and his agents of buzz face some risk as they slink around darkened cityscapes, fire up a portable generator, and use their spotlight to turn night to Ninkasi. “We’re not invading anybody’s space, but there’s a certain amount of ‘could we get thrown in jail for this?’ We’re gonna darn well find out,” Floyd says, laughing. “We’re going to stay as creative as possible in our marketing techniques.”

Inspired and persistent marketing tactics, write Sheehan and O’Leary, are like “bonfires that you build to light the way to your store.”

Soon, a giant “N” might slice through the night and land on the side of San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid, lighting the way to Ninkasi for a new Northern California customer base. And anyone passing by with an iPhone will be able to tap the buzz with the latest in mobile Ninkasi-fication—the official Ninkasi app, new for 2010.