How Sapporo Turned Anonymous Shoppers Into ~40,000+ Known Consumers with Brij

About Sapporo USA

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Sapporo USA is a leading beverage company with a broad retail footprint. Known for bold flavors, innovative brand partnerships, and a passionate community of beer enthusiasts, Sapporo has built a strong presence both on-shelf and on-premise.

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While their retail distribution channels were thriving, Sapporo faced a challenge common to beverage brands with wide retail reach: the vast majority of their customers were completely unknown to them. Every can purchased at a grocery store, every pint poured at a taproom was a transaction without identities, buyers that couldn’t be retargeted. Sapporo wanted to change that.

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The Challenge

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Sapporo sought a solution to address several interconnected challenges that were limiting their ability to build direct consumer relationships and grow their CRM:

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Anonymous Retail Customers 

With products distributed across major retail accounts, Sapporo had no way to identify who was buying their beer off the shelf. Every retail purchase was a missed opportunity to capture a first-party signal and begin a direct relationship with the consumer.

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A CRM Starting From Zero

Before their work with Brij, Sapporo had minimal email infrastructure. With only around 800 subscribers, they had no systematic way to capture consumer data from retail purchases, no meaningful email channel to speak of, and no foundation for ongoing consumer communication.

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Low Redemption

Previous campaigns had yielded poor redemption numbers, leaving consumer data on the table and limiting Sapporo's ability to convert promotional spend into lasting relationships.

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The Brij Solution

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Sapporo partnered with Brij to build the growth infrastructure they needed to go from anonymous shelf transactions to identified, engaged consumers, turning every scan into a signal and every signal into a relationship.

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From Shelf to Signal: On-Package QR Experiences

Brij placed QR codes across Sapporo's packaging and POS materials, creating a direct bridge between the retail shelf and Sapporo's CRM. When a shopper scanned the code, they entered a branded Brij digital experience, and for the first time, that anonymous retail customer became a known consumer with a name, an email, and a purchase signal mapped directly back to Sapporo's Klaviyo account.

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Ghost of Yotei PlayStation Partnership

For their high-profile campaign in partnership with PlayStation, Sapporo leveraged Brij's unique code distribution capability to deliver a seamless consumer experience at scale. Shoppers scanned a QR code on Sapporo packaging, registered via a Brij-powered Klaviyo flow, and instantly received a unique PlayStation game unlock code. The campaign drove 104 scans per day, collecting critical 1P data to market to these people later. 

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Giveaways & Contests

Sapporo used Brij to power periodic contests and giveaways, each designed to capture emails and deepen consumer engagement through Klaviyo-integrated registration flows.

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The Results

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Since launching with Brij in October 2023, Sapporo has transformed their consumer data strategy, moving from a brand with virtually no CRM infrastructure to one with a growing, 

engaged subscriber base and a clear line of sight into who their customers are.

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• A 42% sign-up rate across all eligible Brij experiences, meaning that of every consumer who landed on a Brij experience with registration or sign-up enabled, 42% submitted their email address or phone number, turning an anonymous buyer view into a known customer.
• The Ghost of Yotei PlayStation campaign drove 104 scans per day, building the email list at scale through a single on-package experience.
• Captured ~40,000+ consumer registrations across all Brij experiences – a dramatic leap from the ~800 subscribers Sapporo had before partnering with Brij, driven entirely by packaging-based, in-venue, and digital experiences.

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What's Next

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Sapporo plans to continue building on Brij as the foundation of their consumer data strategy, including exploring Brij's receipt upload and proof-of-purchase features to drive user-generated content and deepen retail engagement.

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By giving Sapporo the infrastructure to identify anonymous retail customers, map first-party data back to their CRM, and build direct consumer relationships at every touchpoint – from the shelf to the inbox – Brij has transformed how Sapporo understands and engages its audience.

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