Good morning!

I'm excited to share CODO's 2025 Beer Branding Trends Review with you. 

This is our annual deep dive on what we see shaping the beer and Bev Alc space (from a branding perspective) right now.

1. Read the report here.

2. If audio is more your speed, Cody and I recorded a companion podcast that serves as high-level overview of this piece. Listen to that here.


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As a thank you for being a subscriber, we've pulled out 4 specific portions of this report and sending them to your inbox only over the coming weeks.

These issues include:

1. How to future proof your flagships (April 8)

2. How soon should your brewery jump on a trend? (April 22)

3. Is a cannabis beverage right for your brewery? (May 6)

4. How Legacy Breweries can sell more beer (May 20)

These issues are newsletter exclusives, meaning they won't be published in our broader report.

So you can brag to your colleagues who aren't BBT subscribers about how much more informed you are on all things beer branding and marketing. 

Or you can just use these insights to build a stronger brand and outcompete them. (Your call.)

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If you're reading this, then you don't have to do anything to receive these exclusive emails — you're already in.

If you'd like to make sure your team member(s) receive these exclusive insights, please forward this email to them (or have them subscribe here).

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We're also planning to record a Q&A podcast on this year's report in a month or so.

Please email me any questions you have on anything we cover here and we'll field those on the show.

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Here's an outline for this year's report:

Section 1: Brewery Brand & Portfolio Strategy

Why are breweries rebranding right now?
• Sales are flat
• Things are going well and you want to capitalize on that momentum 
• “It’s just time”
• Rebranding ahead of an important Brand Architecture move
• Cleaning up a poorly performing previous rebrand 


How Legacy Breweries can sell more beer – (BBT Newsletter Exclusive) 
• How can you court lapsed fans and younger drinkers?
• Define your Brand Strategy to get a lay of the land 
• Define your Key Communication Pillars (and your brand voice & personality)
• Move beyond table stakes 
• Consider Co-branding: A tactical way of authentically connecting your brand to a region 
• Build Sub Brands (and have a broader focus on your Brand Architecture)
• Consider a brand and package Refresh (you gotta knock the dust off)


Package refreshes are trending as a lower cost investment
• What is a package refresh? 
• Package refresh vs. a deeper rebrand: On weighing risk vs. reward 
• Cost is subjective
• How big a swing can you take?
• When your equity calls for a refresh
• Brand Strategy (to invest or not to invest?)
• Where these projects can falter
• Make sure you don’t need to solve a Brand problem 
• When should you plan your next refresh? 

How to future proof your flagships – (BBT Newsletter Exclusive) 
• Flagship beer brands (think Beyond Beer)
• Branded House vs. Sub Brands
• Can you scale the Sub Brand Ladder?
• How to safely leverage your Brand Equity (how far to extend brand)
• Can you use scarcity as a nudge? 
• Plan for continual refreshes
• On sustainability as positioning
• Invest in storytelling and content marketing 
• Remember what you’re *actually* selling

Dialing in your seasonals
• Can a seasonal be pressed into a year-round offering?
• How should you differentiate your seasonal packaging from your flagships?
• Highlight that these are Limited Time Only (LTO) products  

Style names as a positioning tool 
• The evolving role of style names
• Meet your consumers where they are
 

A renewed focus on the on-premise
• Shifting hours & your taproom’s role in people’s lives 
• Something for everyone 
• Conclusion: Connecting off-premise with on-premise 
• A shift towards hospitality
• Your brewery’s brand should precede you

Section 2: Brand Architecture 
 

Sub Brand use cases
• What is a Sub Brand?
• Sub Brand use case #1: Bridging into the Fourth Category 
• Sub Brand use case #2: Building a budget line 
• Sub Brand use case #3: Creating a brand that can travel

How soon should you jump on a trend? – (BBT Newsletter Exclusive)
• Brand Architecture 
• Where are you located?
• Is there an 800-pound gorilla in the segment yet? 
• Are you passionate about this category? 
• Could you give it a slow boil?
• Remember the Law of Category
 

House of Brands
• What is a House of Brands? 
• Highly targeted niche audiences / protect parent brand
• Building a House of Brands can be challenging for smaller breweries 
• A House of Brands is costly to build 
• Capacity, capacity, capacity
• Wrapping up: People aren’t stupid

Section 3: Beer & Beyond (Beverage Trends)
 

The Year of Lager
• Lager is easy
• Lager is nostalgic
• Lager is big business
• Lager can be a lifestyle brand platform 
• Lager gets cold 
• Food for thought: Old school "babe-centric" advertising
• Lager: It’s brand (and personality, and Sub Brands) all the way down

Small beers. Big opportunity?

The rising importance of fruit & flavor-forward beers

Hard Cider, Revisited
• On apples and provenance (does this scale? does it have to?)
• Who's drinking Hard Cider? (my anecdotal fieldwork from across the country)
• On Brand Architecture 
• On Cider's gluten-free claim (mind the "Positioning Trap")


Should your brewery launch a Cannabis beverage? – (BBT Newsletter Exclusive)
• A note on early adoption
• On Brand Architecture
• Built to sell (the real opportunity at hand)
• On Cannabis IP (how to protect what you build)
• Cannabis-infused beer vs. a canna-beverage

Non-alcoholic beer, canned water & hop water 

Section 4: Branding & Package Design Trends
 

Bifurcation 

Retro keeps marching on

We’re headed out west 

Mascots, Pt. 3 

The occult

Dimensional shading 

Hi, there.

A few quick admin items: 

1. You can read this case study over on our site for a more immersive experience.  

2. We recorded a podcast with Rob Day on what went into Wachusett’s rebrand. Rob is one of the best marketers in the beer industry, so do yourself a favor and listen in for more background context on this revamp.

Okay, let’s get to it.


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Wachusett Brewing was founded in 1994 in the beautiful Westminster, Massachusetts countryside (“Central Mass” in local parlance). In their early years, they became known for making better beer than the other Craft microbrewed offerings available in the region. This led to a lot of growth through the 90s and 2000s, up through the start of the beer boom in 2010.

Wachusett is a fun, legacy brand. They’re known for hosting raucous outdoor music festivals at the brewery. And above all, they’re known for their flagship Blueberry Ale, a lovely, fruited beer that drinks well year-round. 

While Wachusett had a head start on the thousands of other breweries that came after them, they weren’t immune from the market challenges that arose from those same entrants.  

We can fast forward here and hit some highlights to bring you up to current day: 

– Through the 2010s, Wachusett’s sales grew to nearly 70,000 bbl (2018) before cratering to ~15,000 (2024).

– In 2021, the founders sold the company to another group. 

– This group then rebranded Wachusett. 

– This move had zero impact on the sales front.

– In early 2024, Finestkind (the owners of Smuttynose and Five Boroughs Brewing) acquired the brand. 

And here we are. 

After getting their feet under them, one of Finestkind’s first orders of business was to refresh Wachusett’s brand identity in a bid to regain the volume they lost over the last decade. 

They partnered with CODO for this project and I’m excited to walk you through that entire process today. 

Let’s start by examining one of the most important things any Legacy Brewery needs to consider when embarking on a revamp: How to (or not to) evolve its Brand Equity. 

(Above): Wachusett's early brand identity and packaging. 

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Brand Equity vs. visual equity 

One of the first things CODO does when rebranding a brewery (Legacy, or otherwise), is review all of their historic packaging. We do this to get a sense of how the brand has evolved over the years so we can 1) logically evolve the identity if that makes sense, and 2) see if there’s anything magic hiding in the archives. 

In reviewing Wachusett’s original brand identity and packaging, we found that everything was pretty much par for a brewery that came to market in the 90s. Homespun labels consisting of inelegant images and clunky typography abound. This was so long ago that it doesn’t warrant critique. (And besides, there's a certain charm that usually comes with beer branding from this era.)

But while there was a certain charm here, interestingly — quizzically? — we found that there weren’t actually any strong visual elements that defined the brand. It was all bland enough that nothing stuck out. (The fact that they grew as big as they did at their peak is a testament to their beer itself and how the brewery enmeshed itself throughout New England.)

(Above): Wachusett's latest (pre-rebrand) packaging.

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All of this added up to one of the most interesting situations we’ve seen in nearly 16 years of business. 

This is a 30+ year old brewery with no visual equity to speak of. Out of everything we reviewed, we only found these elements were worth retaining and exploring:

– The arched typography 

– The barn (while not historic, this has been around for a minute (since their previous rebrand), so there is some familiarity in the market place. Plus, it speaks to their broader positioning in a compelling way. More on this in a sec.)

That’s it for visual equity. But what Wachusett lacks in visual equity, it more than makes up for in Brand Equity. 

> Learn more about how we think about Visual vs. Brand Equity here. 

We highlighted this up top, but the brewery is known for fun outdoor concerts, the beautiful Central Mass countryside (and all the fun activities that come along with that) and Blueberry Ale. 

Wachusett’s Blueberry Ale is such an important part of their business that this entire project revolved around its packaging. This is a monster brand — comprising ~85% of their sales — so this packaging was every bit as important as their brand identity itself. And the real opportunity at hand is for Wachusett to completely own the blueberry / fruited-beer segment throughout New England.

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With these messaging and visual parameters in place, we rolled right into art direction. 

(Above): A quick look at Wachusett’s 2021 rebrand. We heard near universally negative feedback on this work during our initial research, including such doozies as, “It lost its soul,” and, “It’s too sterile,” and, “The packaging is abysmal.” (Ouch.) 


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Art Directing Wachusett’s rebrand 

At this point, we shift gears and start to explore how all of these ideas can come to life visually. Through this, we explored three big ideas that came from our conversations with Wachusett’s distributors, retailers and the Finestkind team. 

– Red Barn Romanticism: Centers around the rustic, pastoral central Massachusetts countryside. This would feature faded colors, worn textures and nostalgic farmers market iconography.

– Boot Stompin’ Good Time: Celebrates the idea of enjoying live music and drinking beer with the sun in your face. This would feature expressive, fun typography and illustrations you might find on screen printed concert gig posters. 

– Outdoors Escape: Positions Wachusett as a companion for all of your central Mass outdoors adventures. Fill your cooler with Blueberry Ale and spend the day kayaking, catching bass and hiking beautiful old growth forests.


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While all of these ideas were true, and appropriate for Wachusett, the second direction was the most fitting. The first concept left out the important idea of outdoors music and fun, while the third direction pushed into the overly-trod outdoors trope you find throughout craft beer. (How many outdoorsy beer brands can you think of in your market?)

"Boot Stomping' Good Time" meshed well with Wachusett's existing “Commonwealth Country” Essence. This allowed for a blending of the first and second mood boards into a nice mash up that felt authentic and defensible from a positioning standpoint. 

From here, we begin sketching.

Initial sketching 

We explored two fully-developed directions consisting of a Modular Brand Identity system and packaging concepts for Wachusett’s #1 and #2 brands, Blueberry and Wally. 

The identity options each explored the arched typography in their own way, and the supporting iconography fleshed out a handful of other compelling claims we framed during our up front conversations, things like:

– “Catch a good time” (tagline)

– Bringing the barn back (in some form)

– “Every season is blueberry season” (vs. “It’s always blueberry season”)

– “Around here since 1994” (one of my favorite lines we’ve ever developed)

Direction 1 leaned more into the rustic, textured farmers market aesthetic you’ll find throughout Central Mass, while the second direction leaned into the warm, expressive typography you find on screen printed gig posters.

All of this work was well received, but the real star of the show — the reason we’re all working on this — was the packaging revamp itself. So let’s discuss that now.

Blueberry 

Each packaging direction followed its respective brand identity’s look and feel. The first direction looked like something hand painted on a country-side U-Pick operation. 

The second direction presented a much bigger leap from where Blueberry has historically been. Here, we’re intentionally positioning the brand to look less like a beer and more like a more mainstream CPG beverage. 

This was by design. 

This brand has an opportunity to continue speaking to Wachusett loyalists, while reaching beyond the beer aisle and grabbing people who are interested in familiar flavors and experiences, but may not otherwise know, or care, that much about Craft Beer. 

> We discussed this tension, and the resulting conversation the Finestkind team had in our podcast with Rob. This segment starts around the 28 minute mark. Listen to that here.

This can easily spin into a deeper conversation about where the beer and Bev Alc industry is headed right now, so I’ll cut it short and offer that this direction is a move meant to meet a potential customer right where they are. Be that at a grocery store, a liquor store, a C-store or digging around in a battered old cooler tucked up in the shade on a sand bar on a river day). 

This is a blueberry beer. Period. 

We don’t need to worry about style names and IBUs and SRM and all that traditional Craft Beer baggage.

If you like Blueberries, then give this a shot.

Wally (Navigating an esoteric brand name)

Wachusett’s #2 brand is a New England IPA named Wally. I would’ve mentioned this up top, but wanted to call it out specifically down here. 

(If the challenge of figuring out how to work around an esoteric brand name doesn’t apply to your brewery, skip ahead to the revisions section. If this does interest you, here are some more strategies for combatting this issue.)

Okay, Wally gets its name from the founder of the iconic Airstream Trailer, Wally Barnes. The Wachusett founders were fans of Airstreams, so they named their beer after Mr. Barnes.

What does all of this have to do with Wachusett Brewing? Or Central Massachusetts? Or live music in the sun? Or, anything at all relevant to craft microbrewed beer?

These are all great questions. 

Nothing. (The answer is nothing.)

This is just an esoteric name that was floated at one point, and then stuck due to the beer itself becoming popular. (I'm sure that's happened at your brewery a time or two over the years.)

We briefly discussed the merits of rolling their entire portfolio over to a Monolithic Branded House to follow the Wachusett Blueberry nomenclature, so Wally could become Wachusett Juicy IPA, etc. But the Finestkind team kiboshed this idea because we were already making some substantial changes. And there is equity in this name, plus a good deal of existing sales volume and maybe a good story to spin. So even though keeping this name in the mix might not be as cohesive as it could be, the risk of jettisoning it altogether was worse.

Okay, so we’ve got this name. So should we, uhh, put an Airstream on this can? Or a woodcut illustration of Wally Barnes himself? (And gird ourselves for the inevitable C&D that would come from that…)

Nah. 

Instead, the Wachusett team suggested we humanize Wally. Instead of some bygone founder, he's a carefree regular guy who likes to cut loose on the weekends. He’s your trusted local mechanic. Or that old friend who you can pick up right where you left off, no matter how much time has passed since you last spoke. 

We landed on a fun name patch exploration to speak to this, and love it. It’s blue collar and approachable and friendly and it pairs well with the new Blueberry can design.

Revisions

I’ll skip right to the point here. The Finestkind team fell in love with the second direction, almost lock, stock and barrel. 

There were a few items from the first direction they wanted to see incorporated into the final identity, so our revisions mostly centered around getting all of those assets brought in line with the second direction and squared away for production.

We made our requisite million changes that no one will ever notice (kerning, subtly shifting the color palette, adjusting grit levels, etc.). And we focused on developing a few other supporting icons that highlight Wachusett’s history. 

(Again, this line, “Around here since 1994” is one of my favorite things to come out of this process.

Wrapping up

At this point in the process, we wrapped up Wachusett’s brand identity and style guide while their in-house team took our packaging concepts and continued revising internally. All of this work was completed on a super tight timeline in order to reintroduce the Wachusett brand to their distributors during ABP season. 

I’m happy to report that this new direction was resoundingly well-received internally, including amongst Wachusett old timers and during a handful of critical ABP presentations. 

That means this new look is rolling out as we speak in Massachusetts and across all of New England, and should be fully out in the market by Spring 2025. 

Here are a few snapshots of major placements that are happening behind the scenes. (It's always fun seeing these roll in.)

Shoutout to the Barrel One sales team for grinding it out and earning tons of important new PODs during the launch period.

A few big takeaways (because this case study isn’t already long enough…) 

1. Your visual and Brand Equity are important elements of your rebrand. If you’re thinking about revamping your brewery’s identity, you need to honor where your brand has been, but only if this helps you steer the business where you want to take it. 

2. Email me with the subject line Blueberry. The 7th and 21st person to do so will each win a free copy of our Craft Beer, Rebranded book bundle. 

3. There will be a lot of Legacy beer brands on the market in the coming years. If your team is built for it, there will be some fun opportunities to build a larger portfolio with this IP. Stay tuned for a larger series exploring this idea this summer. 

4. And finally, the beer industry is facing a rapidly changing market. And we all need to work hard to ensure that we’re actively speaking to new drinkers, whether that’s lapsed fans or a newly LDA twenty-something. In either case, style names, highlighting a beer’s flavor and familiarity itself are all compelling levers you can tinker with to reach out to new folks, bring them into the fold and sell more beer.

Hi, there.

Cody and I just got back from CiderCon in Chicago. (Think Craft Brewers Conference but for cideries.) 

We were there giving a presentation on how cideries can use Brand Architecture to scale their brands. And we had a great time — we met a few clients and friends, discussed several new projects and drank loads of lovely cider from all over the world. 

Today, I want to discuss a handful of topics we heard at the conference as well as what we’re seeing in our hard cider branding work as of late. 

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The last time we discussed hard cider here on BBT, we received some push back because we wrote about it through the lens of breweries making cider as a fourth category beverage. 

This push back — really from just a few folks — came entirely from people who work in cider. I think they were offended that I suggested an outsider make cider.

Point taken. 

I’ll keep today’s thoughts more broadly applicable, so the pommeliers out there get as much out of this as the brewers. 

Good? Let’s get to it.

(Above): Shoutout to Shacksbury Cider out of Vermont. This outfit always has super fun package design. 

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1

On apples and provenance ( Does this scale? Does it have to? )

Provenance has always been an important value prop in craft beverage.

And cider has a leg up on beer in this regard because you can point to physical orchards  — and trees and dirt and bees and baskets and tractors and old farm dogs, all of it — to tell your story. 

This is wonderful. So if you have it, and if it suits your positioning, flaunt it. 

Anything that gives consumers a frame of reference for why your products are different should be explored. 

However, the current winners in cider — Schilling, Blake’s, Two Towns, Angry Orchard, et al. — don’t hang their hats on this exclusively. It’s certainly a part of their story, where relevant, but looking at their packaging shows a broader focus on CPG beverage cues. Namely, fruit and flavor and personality and vibes.

Cider brands that are crushing it right now are — similar to beer and RTDs and FMBs — leading with their brand and flavor above all else. 

This is an important trend to keep in mind if your cidery (or brewery) is thinking through how to appeal to a broader audience. Going broader means a bigger potential audience that is already drinking across category. So meet them where they are.

(Above): Schilling and Blake's fully (and successfully) embrace the CPG aesthetic over artisanal provenance. 

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2

Who’s drinking hard cider? 

Broad brush time: A cider drinker is:

– Someone who drinks across category (beer, cider, NA, spirits, RTDs, etc.)

– Fairly gender neutral (though proportionately attracting more women than men compared to beer)

– More health conscious (not always, but generally)

– Someone who drinks cider for a health reason (gluten-free or reduced, etc.)

– Someone who enjoys flavor and sensory experience 

– Young-ish: Cider could reach LDA Gen Z folks as well as Millennials (and Gen Xers)

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Findings from CODO field work (anecdotal) 

One of my favorite things to do when in a brewery taproom — whether for work or pleasure — is to ask servers and bartenders what they see people order most often. 

This is anecdotal, but it seems like every time I ask someone this question (when they serve cider), they mention it as a crowd favorite. Here are a collection of quotes I’ve gathered from recent rebrand kickoff interviews:

– “Wine drinkers gravitate towards our cider [because we don’t serve wine].”

– “We see a lot of wives order it. And gluten-free folks, of course.”

– “We actually see a lot of younger guys order it, particularly our dry cider.”

– “It’s [cider] a great answer to the question, “What do you have that isn’t beer?”

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There’s an overlap with beer drinkers here. But don’t make the mistake of viewing your audience as monolithic. People have different tastes and preferences, and hard cider can be a great addition (particularly in the on-premise) if you’re not already making it.

(Above): Check out our AleSmith Hard Cider case study for a good look at how. brewery can step into this segment. And here's a companion podcast with Brandon and Kristen for more background context on why AleSmith felt right now was the time to get into cider. 

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3

On Brand Architecture ( How should your cider relate, or not relate, to your parent brand?) 

This point is specific to breweries, or any non-cider concern that is considering entering the category. 

If you’re looking to launch a cider line, you've got several strategic options to consider. You could launch it as…

– A Brand Extension 

– A Sub Brand

– An Endorsed Brand

– An entirely new brand 

The choice here largely depends on your parent brand’s equity and positioning as well as your target market. If your brewery has strong recognition and trust, leveraging that existing brand might make sense. However, if you're targeting a distinctly different audience or want to avoid any potential confusion with your beer offerings, a separate brand might be the better path.

If you’ve been reading BBT for a while, none of this will be new to you. But here are a few refresher links on these topics, in case you’re actively planning a new brand launch:

– The role of your parent brand in Brand Architecture

– Brand Extensions vs. Sub Brands

– Sub Brands vs Endorsed Brands 

– Are fanciful named beers Sub Brands?

– Is a House of Brands right for your brewery?

(Above): Our Beverage Extension Assessment Tool (B.E.A.T.) is a purpose-built diagnostic quiz for positioning, branding and launching your next beverage. 

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4

On cider’s Gluten Free claim 

This value prop comes up every single time we work on a cider brand.

And I understand why. For people who are cutting back, or actually unable to ingest gluten, this is  a critical differentiator. 

And as we explored last time [LINK], the gluten free claim punches far above its weight and can cast a broader halo effect over the rest of your brand — Oh, this is gluten free. That must mean this is healthier than these other brands.

A caution: Mind the positioning trap

Positioning boils down to 3 main points: 

– What do you do / offer / make? 

– For whom (who is your intended audience?)

– And how you are meaningfully differentiated from your competition?

Your goal as a cider (or beer, spirits, XYZ beverage) brand is to land in the top 2 or 3 spots in someone’s head for a given category. 

Example: What brand comes to mind when you think of Non Alcoholic beer? How about canned water? How about hard tea? 

(YMMV depending on where you’re located, but if you’re here in America, I bet you answered Athletic, Liquid Death and Twisted Tea.)

From a consumer standpoint, positioning is how people categorize you in their mind. We can’t remember the names and differences between hundreds of options. We can’t even do that with dozens of options, it’s just not how we’re wired. (For fun, try to name 12 shampoo brands. I’ll wait.)

So we look for meaningful points of differentiation—story, value props, and how your brand will help me self-actualize and help me shape my own identity — as a way to categorize brands in our head. 

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Back to gluten now…

If you lead with a gluten-free claim, that's exactly how people will categorize your brand. Not whatever story you're telling, or how your packaging looks, but as a gluten-free product. 

And here's where we need to think strategically about audience size and industry direction. Leading cider brands are increasingly positioning themselves with broader, more mainstream CPG approaches. They're speaking to wider audiences about lifestyle, taste and occasions — not hanging their hat on niche attributes.

When we look at audience size:

– Those who medically require gluten-free products represent a dedicated, but small segment

– Health-conscious consumers who prefer gluten-free options make up a larger, but still limited audience

– The total addressable market for cider drinkers is significantly larger than both these segments combined

This doesn't mean you should ignore the gluten-free attribute — it is still valuable (see the halo effect idea above). But consider it as part of your broader story rather than your primary positioning.

Think of it as a supporting proof point that reinforces your larger brand narrative, rather than the narrative itself.

Remember: Positioning is one of the most important ongoing exercises you engage in. While having unique claims like gluten-free can be tempting to lead with, make sure you're not inadvertently limiting your brand's potential by focusing too narrowly. 

The question isn't just "Can we claim this?" but rather "Does this claim help us reach and resonate with our largest possible audience?"

(Above): Not sure of the veracity here, but I've always loved this claim on Angry Orchard's packaging. Gives people a clear frame of reference for why they should buy the product. 

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Where does hard cider go from here?

If you’ve listened to the BBT podcast, or seen us on stage at a conference, or taken a peek inside our office kegerator, you know how bullish CODO is on hard cider. I believe broader Bev Alc and consumer trends point to some bright days ahead for this segment. 

We see nothing but runway here (and actively shifting format rules, regulations and tax structures will make this more compelling in the immediate term as well).

With consumers increasingly seeking variety across category, cider is perfectly positioned for growth.

The key to success will be maintaining cider's craft credentials while making it more accessible and appealing to mainstream consumers — in more of a broader CPG play. Brands that can balance tradition with innovation, while delivering clear, compelling brand stories, will be best positioned to capture this growth.

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Hi, there. 

1. For a more immersive experience, read this case study over on our site.

2. We recorded a podcast with Malibu Brewing founders, Ryan and Jill. Listen to that conversation here.


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Malibu is quintessential California — stunning views where the mountains run into the sea. Gorgeous weather. Beautiful architecture. Sunkissed people surfing and hiking. The occasional movie star sighting. And again, the weather. 

Malibu has all of these wonderful things, but doesn't have a craft beer scene.

A small brewery called Malibu Brewing is working to change that, and by all measures, they’re doing a great job. 

Founded by Ryan and Jill Ahrens less than three years ago, they’ve already scaled to produce more than 1,300 barrels per year. And they’ve got ambitious goals. Not growth for the sake of growth, but smart, organic growth by doing things right and continuing to carve out a beer culture amongst a sea of tequila, wine and cannabis. 

An important element of this growth plan is a core package refresh. 

(Above): Yeah, yeah… Malibu's great. But have you been to Indiana?!?

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In late 2023, the Malibu team reached out to CODO to discuss that package refresh, but a broader scope as well that included a Brand Strategy and Architecture review in a bid to shore up their overall identity ahead of this planned growth. 

Ryan and Jill have been gracious enough to let us give you a full behind the scenes look at this process. We’re going to explore a few big ideas in this case study:

– Malibu’s Brand Strategy and Brand Architecture mapping process. 

– Malibu’s paint points and opportunities.

– The nuts and bolts of their package refresh, including initial sketching, revisions, illustration and retail considerations.

Let’s get into it.

 (Above): Malibu's previous packaging.

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Malibu’s Brand Architecture

Malibu Brewing has a lot of exciting things moving right now. And they wanted to properly organize their Brand Architecture ahead of some of these larger initiatives so they could pre-make some decisions.

A few things they wanted guidance on:

– If we were to acquire another brewery, how could we fold their brand under the Malibu banner? 

– If we were to open another brewery in Malibu, should we call this “Malibu Brewing” as well or develop a more localized, neighborhood name?

– If we were to launch a Hop Water (and other NA products), would this be a Malibu product, or should we create a separate Endorsed, if not entirely standalone lifestyle brand?

– Is Malibu Brewing a Craft Brewery, or a broader hospitality group?

– Does the Malibu name limit where we can take the brand? Does being from Malibu help, hurt or even matter to folks in Rancho Cucamonga (as an example)?

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In working through these questions, we recommended Malibu build a Hybrid Brand Architecture Model with a Branded House foundation. This allows their core portfolio to continue growing and defining the beer scene in Malibu while also allowing their team to explore select products and categories over the coming years (e.g. Hop Water, hybrid beverages, a differentiated hard seltzer)

(Above): Malibu's Brand Architecture Map. Note the recommendations for potential Sub Brands based on their dialed in beer styles and names. Ryan and Jill walked through why they felt Brand Architecture was so valuable on our podcast.

—

 

Here are a handful of other interesting ideas we discussed through their Brand Strategy work:

Working against the craft beer stereotype 

Something we heard over and over in our initial field work was how surprised people were when they first stepped into Malibu’s taproom. 

We mentioned earlier that there’s not really a Craft Beer scene in Malibu. What this means for someone who wants to build a brewery there is that they’re working against an entrenched (and kinda true?) stereotype for what a brewery is — uninspired industrial space, uncomfortable furniture, poorly lit, no food, homogenous crowd, etc.

And if that’s not your vibe, you’ll just skip the entire scene.

Malibu Brewing bucks this stereotype with a gorgeous taproom. Right on the beach, Ryan and Jill have put every bit as much intention into their FF&E as they have their pilsner or hazy recipe. 

I wanted to highlight this idea here because this has been a crucial part of Malibu’s fast growth. And I believe more breweries should reimagine, and invest heavily in their taprooms and overall brand experience, if they want to attract new customers. 

(Above): Malibu's gorgeous taproom. (I always know a place is nice when I feel like I shouldn't be allowed in there.)

—


Is Malibu a brewery brand or a broader hospitality group?

I wanted to highlight this idea as well, because we’re seeing breweries across the country struggle with this. 

One question Malibu had going into his process was whether or not it made sense to create a separate hospitality brand ahead of their expansion. 

We’re Malibu Brewing now with one location. What happens when we open our second location in town? Or if we open a new taproom over in Rancho Cucamonga? Or if we open a cocktail bar? 

Our stance is that Malibu Brewing is a Craft Beer brand, albeit one with an outsized hospitality focus. We see a real opportunity to buck the negative craft beer tropes by blowing customers away with an unparalleled experience (everything from decor, to food and branding and package design and staff eduction and customer service).

While the hardcore craft beer fan may not be motivated by this alone, we think local folks who are new to craft (underserved demographics, younger LDA drinkers and even craft’s traditional demo of Millennials and Gen Xers who never caught the craft bug in the first place) will respond inordinately well to this approach. 

This issue — brewery vs. hospitality group — collided directly another important and timely question:


How well does the Malibu name travel?

Does a localized name (e.g. named after a place) limit where the brand can credibly go?

Does being from Malibu help, hurt or even matter to folks in Rancho Cucamonga? How about further away in Los Angeles?

Directly from our Brand Strategy document here:

We believe the Malibu brand (beautiful beach, scenery and people — an aspirational California getaway) is imminently exportable. 

We recommend you should own Malibu (the locale) completely. Carrying your name through to follow-on concepts will bolster your local bonafides as well as gird against any potential future competition. Regardless of how far you expand, owning the Malibu market will be crucial for your brand and business health. 

This means that satellite locations, even if across town, should be named Malibu Brewing Co., no different from your flagship location. Opening another location in Malibu proper will likely capture an entirely unique, hyper-local audience. For them, this is Malibu Brewing. So reinforce that. 

However, we recommend giving each location its own unique vibe, bespoke to the area. So different interior design features, murals, colors, furniture, fixtures, etc. You could also give them a fun, colloquial nickname (e.g. “Malibu North”). So even though the location flies under the Malibu banner, you won’t be perceived as a chain.

(Above): Brand Architecture played a crucial role in our Brand Strategy work with Malibu. Read The Beyond Beer Handbook for a full run down on everything you need to know about this topic and how you can use it to map out your brewery's portfolio. 

—

 

Art Direction & Mood Boarding  

From an art direction standpoint, several big ideas — Brand Essences — emerged from our conversations, stakeholder interviews and fieldwork.

The first, “Vacation in a 6-pack” spoke to Malibu in an expected way. This is as aspirational as it gets. A beautiful day on the beach. Phone turned off. The wind, the sand the sea. This direction sells Malibu as the brand. A nostalgic, sunny beach trip. 

The second and third directions “Craft Beer, Elevated,” and “Down-to-Earth Excellence” each spoke to the idea of quality, through their beer itself, but more importantly at the hospitality level. Malibu has a gorgeous taproom—it’s aesthetic and instagram worthy (without being overbearing). How can we capture this idea and pull it through to inform their packaging and broader marketing? 

How should your taproom inform your brand identity and packaging and vis versa?

After a few lively conversations, their final Brand Essence ended up centering around this idea of Approachable Elegance. 

This positions the Malibu Brewing brand as confident and intentional. Attentive to detail, but still laid back. Elevated, but grounded. Timeless, with just a touch of nostalgia.

With the Brand Strategy (positioning, messaging and Essence) and art direction (mood boards, brand voice and personality) all set, we moved right into the package design process. 

(Above): Malibu's Brand Strategy doc, including mood boards for collaborative art direction.

—

 

Malibu's Package Refresh 

Malibu’s package refresh work itself was pretty straight forward (thanks to the Brand Strategy and Architecture work on the front end). 

We explored two different concepts here, that:

– Looked less like seltzer and more like beer (an important project goal).
– Looked premium without being too fussy (an important communication goal).
– Retained the visual equity that was working from their previous packaging (so a clear evolution).

This resulted in two initial directions that each explored a different take on evolving their previous look.

The Malibu team loved (LOVED!) the first direction, so we moved right onto revisions. 

We can fast forward at this point since most of our time in revisions revolved around dialing in illustrations and color ways for each brand, debating which messaging made the most sense to include on their packaging (including differences between the primary and secondary formats) and overseeing the production process to ensure everything prints as we envisioned.

Wrapping up 

This package refresh is rolling out as we speak and I predict (as does the Malibu team) that it’s going to perform really well out in the market. 

But when this happens, we can’t really take credit for their growth.

—

It’s easy to find scary stories about the beer industry today. And there’s no need to sugarcoat it — times are tough.

But if you understand your story and what you stand for, if you understand what makes your customers tick, if you make phenomenal beer, if you invest in your critical touch points — your brand identity, packaging, merch and taproom design — you can still thrive.

Malibu Brewing proves this every single day. 

And we’re honored to play a small part in seeing where they go from here.

– How do we recruit new, younger drinkers? 

– How do we make our packaging stand out in retail?

– How can we get our distributor(s) to care about our brand again?

– How do we stand out from the dozens (or hundreds) of local options?

– What even is our story today, XX years in?

—

This weariness is particularly prevalent amongst older, mid-market breweries: Outfits who are ~10 to 20+ years old and making anywhere from ~5k to 15k+ bbl per year. In many cases, they're no longer seen as cool, or romantic, or sexy.

But, perhaps most painful of all, you have a growing number of lapsed fans — folks who have moved on to drink beer from other breweries, or beyond beer products, or, less alcohol in general.

This leaves you on an island, unsure where to go from here.

We have all this history, this legacy. We have this volume, (though it's slowly eroding). What do we do?

—

Okay, enough editorializing.

I’m excited to walk you through our recent brand refresh work with Alewerks Brewing because they fit my rambling prologue to a tee.

Let’s look at their stats:

– Founded in 2006 in Williamsburg, Virginia as "Williamsburg AleWerks."

– They’ve grown to be one of the state’s largest breweries. 

– They’re known for making phenomenal, dead reliable, classic beer styles, including their regional cult classic Pumpkin seasonal.

– They’re also a brewer’s brewery, with several previous employees going on to build wonderful careers after their Alewerks tenure.

– In 2012, they changed their name to "Alewerks Brewing Co," and have since undergone a series of smart identity and package refreshes. (See the art below for reference.)

– Their sales are flat (though holding steady at a time when many other breweries are actively losing volume).

—

Taken in aggregate, it’s clear that Alewerks wasn’t facing an existential crisis. They’ve got a well-rounded portfolio. They’re invested heavily in their local community. And they have a squared away team and run a solid business behind the scenes. 

Alewerks is, by any measure, a successful brewery . But they ultimately want to move beyond this plateau and get back to consistent, sustainable growth. 

Their team determined that the first step on a long path towards that goal is a sweeping brand refresh.

In late 2023, Alewerks reached out to CODO to discuss this revamp. And we’re going to give you a candid look behind the scenes at that entire process today. 

(Above): Alewerks' name, brand identity and package design evolution through the years.

—
 

Let’s start by looking at some highlights from our Brand Strategy work.

Alewerks’ biggest pain points & opportunities 

We’ve already outlined a few of Alewerks’ problems above. Here are a few quotes pulled directly from our Strategy doc:

– “Alewerks has a solid rep throughout our market. But we also have a rep for being around for a long time. We’ve seen others like us not evolve. And we’ve passed them by. So we have to evolve. We have to give people something new — a different way of thinking about us.”

– “This is a proactive move to reinvigorate Alewerks’ brand before we start sliding. Prioritizing this rebrand as a capital investment (vs. adding sales staff, upgrading equipment, chasing niche consumers with nano-trend releases, etc.) demonstrates our commitment to playing the long game.”

– “It’s time. [Plus,] we’ve seen the power of this sort of move in the past.”

– “Our brand has become tired.”

– “People assume we’re smaller than we are, but we’ve been a top 10 Virginia brewery for years.”


— 


In addition to these issues, the Alewerks name itself is a challenge. First, there are umpteen number of XYZ Aleworks breweries out there, including a few in Virginia. But beyond that, their purposely misspelled name is (wouldn’t ya know) often misspelled out in the wild (e.g. capitalized ‘W,’ split into two words, or using an ‘O’ instead of ‘E’). 

But a bigger issue is that their name, translated literally, means “Brewing Company Brewing Company.” We made a bold recommendation to address this in our Brand Strategy doc, but I’ll save that for the design presentation section below. 

Evolution vs. Revolution ( Is this a rebrand or refresh? )

Figuring out whether a revamp is a refresh or a formal rebrand can be kind of a semantic exercise. Some people use the terms interchangeably, and indeed, there’s a lot of overlap between the two processes (weighing and evolving equity, etc.). 

That being said, we do like to clearly lay out how we’re thinking about the project as an opportunity to hear what our clients think and gut check everything. This is a great opportunity to hash out any remaining thoughts, concerns, or opportunities before moving onto the identity design process. 

Here are a few lines pulled directly from our strategic recommendations:

We recommend a clear evolution of your current logo, centered around the kettle. We will explore interesting ways to turn this into a badge that can be pulled out as a standalone icon. 

Beyond that, we will explore different typography and core colors (currently navy and gold) throughout your packaging. While this combo looks good in a vacuum (website, etc.), these colors seem too staid. Punchier alternatives will give a better shelf presence & presentation. 

—

TLDR: There was just too much equity — nearly 20 year’s worth — in their core logo to jettison it. 

(Above): Alewerks' most recent (pre-refresh) package design system.

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Brand Essences & Mood Boards 

After organizing our findings, Strategy and recommendations, we next had to art direct all of these ideas. Three recurring, compelling themes (Brand Essences) came up through the course of our due diligence.  

The first, “Beer Ex Machina,” was an ode to Alewerks’ behind the scenes production rigor and SOPs. 

The second, “Craft University,” was a nod to Alewerks’ focus on traditional styles as a foil to late stage craft beer where styles (and sometimes decorum?) don’t really matter. This direction focuses heavily on customer education as a way to bring craft back down to where the Alewerks team believes it should be: Well-made, reliable, approachable beer.

The final Essence, “Cream of the Keg,” is a to-the-point way of highlighting Alewerks’ never ending focus on quality. This includes lots of fun visual premium indexes like seals, ribbons and gold and copper highlights. 

—

After a few great conversations and giving their team time to sit with this, we ended up moving forward with the “Craft University” idea.

Their final brand voice included attributes like: Authoritative, Established, Idealistic, Experienced, Sincere. Proud not arrogant. Confident, not cocky.

This is a subtle change from what we originally presented, but ultimately perfectly appropriate for their team and brand. 

At this point, our Brand Strategy work is wrapped and we get to roll up our sleeves and begin sketching on their brand identity.

Initial Branding Presentation

We developed two initial directions to share with the Alewerks team. Here are a few notes on this presentation.  

1. Direction 1 was a lovely update to their current mark. Warm, with subtle rounded corners and attractive, familiar colors. Direction 2 featured a more stylized, retro look — like a brewery identity from the mid-2000’s, but reimagined in a cool way. 

2. We added differing levels of detail to the brew kettle in each direction in a bid to make it not look like a 5 gallon water jug. The first direction featured a hidden ‘A’ in the kettle highlights whereas the second direction grounded the illustration with a viewing port (to help new people understand what they’re actually looking at). 

3. I mentioned above that we made a recommendation on how to handle the “Brewing Company Brewing Company” issue. Let’s talk about that now. 

We recommended that Alewerks colloquially go by that single word alone. So, drop the “Brewing Co.” qualifier from their name and identity wherever possible. 

In its place, they should use “Virginia Craft Beer” in a bid to proudly claim where they’re from, who they serve and position Alewerks as one of the state’s foremost breweries. 

To our surprise, the Alewerks team loved this recommendation. But again, their team was looking to make some decisive moves through this process, so good on them for being open to a bold change like this.

(Above): Note the subtle shift from the "Brewing Company" tag to "Virginia Craft Beer" along the bottom of their core mark.

This eliminated the "Brewing Company Brewing Company" issue while being more vocal and ardent about Alewerks' positioning as a leading Virginia brewery. 

—

Let’s fast forward a bit here.

Alewerks loved the first direction, almost lock, stock and barrel. (Chef’s kiss emoji.)

The only real feedback was to lose the hidden ‘A’ and bring the port over from the second direction. 

From there, we made (approximately) a million changes to get this up to CODO’s standard. Things that no one other than our team will notice like tweaking how the kettle nests in the badge, “melting” the typography, adding some line and texture details (originally from the second direction) and building out the rest of their Modular Brand Identity System.

Once we wrapped their identity, we rolled right onto packaging.

(Above): A snapshot of Alewerks' Modular Brand Identity System.

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Packaging Presentation

Earlier in our Brand Strategy work, we determined that building a monolithic Branded House would work best long term. Alewerks was already working under this system for their flagships, so the continuity would be good. But beyond that, everything they brew is true-to-style, so flying all their products under a singular banner will help to build overarching Brand Equity. 

So when we got to tackle their packaging, we felt that a classic, bifurcated look would let their newly-refined logo shine while standing out from the rest of their competitive set and carrying though enough equity from their previous iteration. 

We explored different ways of handling their tasting notes: Straight and to the point (like their team), and another option with a little more swagger and personality.

And we worked to ensure the beer name and style itself came through clearly, particularly on the 12pk cases, for better merchandising.

Revisions were straightforward and mostly focused on dialing in colors and getting everything consistent across their various formats (including 12oz and 16oz cans, 4-pk, 6-pk and 12-pk boxes, 12oz bottles and 6-pk carriers).

Pumpkin Ale ( & remaining seasonals )

If you’re still reading along, reply to this email with the subject line “Pumpkin.” The 12th person to do so receives a free copy of Craft Beer, Rebranded.

We’ve covered a lot of ground here, but before we close, I’d like to talk about Alewerks’ Pumpkin seasonal. This is one of their most important brands, and it was crucial to get this packaging right. 

This was an interesting challenge from a portfolio standpoint. It needed to clearly look like an Alewerks brand (so follow their newly-refreshed look and feel and live under their Branded House), while at the same time, stand apart as being more premium and limited. 

Here are a few ways we accomplished this:

– We brought in tasteful, etched illustrations to highlight the particular adjunct.

– We added a subtle scalloped edge (more familiar in spirits packaging) along the name and style strip to set this off from the background in a lovely way.

– We added a subtle vignette around each carrier panel for more tonal depth.

– We developed a fun seasonal badge to serve as a violator and draw more attention on the shelf.

– And finally, we used metallic gold foil in a few select spots on the pack. (Again, chef’s kiss emoji.)

—

Once the Pumpkin Ale packaging was squared away, we were able to knock out the remaining seasonals in short order.

(Follow us over on Instagram. We’ll share these there as they debut throughout 2025.)

(Above): We wrapped this project up by building a simple set of Brand Guidelines. 

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Let’s bring this home

Alewerks’ new look will hit the market starting early 2025 and should be out in full force by Spring. 

—

In an era where legacy breweries are grappling with shifting consumer tastes and fierce competition, Alewerks stands as a prime example of how to adapt and thrive. By investing in a comprehensive brand refresh, Alewerks is taking bold steps to revitalize its image and reconnect with longtime fans, lapsed customers and new drinkers alike. 

This willingness to evolve — from refining their identity and packaging to positioning their brewery as a stalwart of Virginia craft beer — demonstrates that established breweries can reinvent themselves without losing their core identity. 

As their new look hits shelves in 2025, Alewerks is sending a clear message: Established doesn't mean outdated. In an industry that often chases the new and novel, they're doubling down on quality beer, consistent service and smart branding. 

And I bet this pays off. 


—



If you’d like to breathe new life into your brewery’s brand, drop me a line. We (CODO) would love to help you with that.

Hi there (and happy new year!). 

Your brewery’s name is one of the most important things you own. 

Ideally, it should hint at what you offer, what you stand for, why you’re different and why someone should care enough to buy your beer over someone else’s. 

Most importantly, your name should help you tell your story and grow your business. 

But what if it doesn’t?

We’ve heard this pain point several times over the years: Our name is tied to a hyper-local thing — a town or state, a landmark, a river, a building or interesting historic story or figure. This plays well locally, but means nothing to anyone outside of our town. 

And while wanton expansion isn’t the clear path to growth that it once was, there’s still some merit for targeted expansion to a few additional markets if you see an opportunity.

So let’s explore a few ways you can make your name more compelling, and graspable, to people further afield in case you’re dealing with this issue. 

(Above): Read more about what goes into a great brewery name in our Birdsmouth Beer Co. branding case study.


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1

Can you just change the name?

Yes, you can always change your name. But this is a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency move. 

To wit, we’ve only made this recommendation 2 or 3 times out of the ~50 brewery rebrands we’ve handled. (That is actual brewery brand names. We’re less precious when it comes to swapping out beer names.)

Whenever we’re working with an established brewery, whether we’re helping to launch an extension, or working on a rebrand, we have to be mindful of Brand Equity. So, what are the key messaging and visual signifiers that, if lost, would confuse your existing fans and actually hurt your business?

Your name is a critical piece of this puzzle. 

And unless your name is posing an immediate and existential threat to your business, and/or, there is no clear path towards overcoming its shortcomings, then it’s almost always better to build around it (via a Sub Brand or some other strategy) than to jettison it entirely.

A quick caveat here is if you’re purchasing a brewery and don’t care about the IP or equity. In that case, break out the white board and change that name.

Read more about how to handle a brewery’s brand post-acquisition here: 

> So you bought a brewery… To rebrand or not to rebrand?

(Above): Dixie Brewing changed its corporate name to the much less problematic (though still esoteric?) Faubourg Brewing Co. back in 2020. Read more about this rebrand here.

—
 

2

Your brand identity itself can do a lot of heavy lifting 

An esoteric name can be challenging, but you can mitigate this through your identity design.

Whether through your core logo, or a series of cool supporting marks, your brand identity system can bridge this gap and tell your story much more compellingly than a name alone.

Your logo isn’t everything, but don’t underestimate the power of a killer mark. 

(Above): Learn more about how we build Modular Brand Identity Systems here.

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3

Your beer names can be an opportunity to speak more broadly than your parent brand

If you’re dealing with a localized, esoteric name, you can, with a simple packaging hierarchy shift, retool your storytelling and marketing to focus more on a particular beer’s name than on your brewery’s parent brand. 

And you don’t have to build formal Sub Brands to achieve this either. 

Great fanciful names can give you a great starting point to connect with people, provided your brewery’s name is downplayed. 

Read more about how fanciful names work under a Branded House architecture model here.

(Above): Fernson Brewing's recent package refresh is a good example of a brewery leaning into its beer names for more individualized storytelling beyond the parent brand.

—
 

4

You could create a Sub / Endorsed Brand as an envoy into other markets 

This is a more costly path, but if you’re dealing with a name that can’t travel, and you want to expand into other markets, you can create a Sub / Endorsed Brand (or a new standalone brand) expressly for this purpose. This is an interesting Sub Brand use case we’ve seen sever times over the last few years. 

This can be a great strategy for breweries that are named after a specific town, state or landmark. (e.g. Maine Beer Co, Tampa Bay Brewing)

This was a key part of our brief when helping Virginia Beer Company launch the Cold Drinking Beer brand. 

Virginia Beer Co wanted to expand into a few neighboring states with a light beer brand, but worried that their name wouldn’t travel well. And we agree, why would someone in South Carolina (home to one of the best brewery scenes in the US) care about Virginia Beer Co.?

This opened up a fun opportunity to create an entirely new brand from the ground up. 

See how we built the Cold Drinking Beer brand here.

Wrapping up 

You can’t have it both ways 

The reality is that this is a tough spot to be in. 

If you have an esoteric, hyper-local name, you’re not really going to be able to have that resonate further away the same way a more intuitive, broader-appeal name would. The ideas we’ve discussed here can help you work around this, but the issue will still be there. 

In addition to these suggestions, I’d like you to consider whether you’ve actually hit the ceiling in your local market? Have you captured every single account you can? Are you in every person’s fridge? And in every venue? 

If you see an opportunity for growth, you should expand to new markets. But it might be worth another look to ensure that you’ve truly owned your backyard before doing so. 

Hi, there. 

So far, we’ve had 227 (!!!) BBT readers take our year end survey. (Please take it yourself if you haven’t already.)

One of our questions on the survey is an AMA section for topics you’d like to see us cover on BBT. We’ve gotten so many great responses to this that I wanted to pull it out and put it right here up top.

Please respond to this email and let me know if you have any questions or topics you’d like us to discuss either here on the newsletter or on the podcast next year. (Or if you'd like to discuss working together in 2025.)

Okay, let’s get to it.

(I’m not sure if you’re going to read this or not.)

Well done if you’re already in year end break mode.

I hope you drink 10,000 beers have a lovely time with your family and friends. 

But if you’re still here and would like to read along, I want to talk with you about something that will help you make better branding decisions throughout 2025 — your Brand Architecture.
 

What’s your 2025 look like? 

If you're planning to:

– Launch a new brand, beer or beyond.
– Launch a new beer series.
– Open a new location.
– Acquire another brand or business.
– Sell one of your brands.
– Scale one of your brands via the Sub Brand Ladder.
– Line Extend one of your existing products.
– Rationalize your portfolio.
– Create a Co-branded product.
– Form a hospitality group. 
– Refresh your brewery's brand and packaging. 

If you are doing any of this, then you’ll be working through Brand Architecture problems. 

And if you don’t pause long enough to work through what each of these moves means to your overall model, you can end up with a tangled mess that your customers — and even your own team — may not understand. 

(Above): Brand Architecture Map for a brewery we're rebranding in Michigan. Their portfolio spans beer, spirits, cider, seltzer, RTDs, NA products and multiple locations. This map helped them think through where their parent brand should (and more importantly, should't) pull through on all of these products. 

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Why Brand Architecture is important 

If you’ve never mapped out your Brand Architecture, you’re in luck — it’s not that hard to do. And even if your Map isn’t as clean, or put together as CODO could build, having one is better than not. 

Why? Because a Brand Architecture Map will help you: 

– Understand how all of your brands, current and future, add up to build a more resilient business.
– Help you make faster decisions when bringing new products to market.
– Help you identify opportunities for new brand development and Line Extensions.
– Spot opportunities to streamline communication (and budget) efforts. 
– Future proof your new product development pipeline. 
– Protect your parent brand from cannibalization and dilution. 
– Present a more compelling, and cohesive, narrative to your fans.

Okay, you get the point. This is an important business function.

So let’s walk through how to get this out onto paper. 

Brand Architecture Mapping

Here's a quick rundown on how to map out your Brand Architecture. 

You can jump straight in the computer here, but at CODO, we like to get on a white board or a blank page — somewhere you can write big and quickly make edits. Your first few rounds of this will be messy, but that’s okay. This is all iterative. 

Step 1: List everything out 

Start by listing out all of your products. Don’t worry about the form this takes yet (e.g. a chart), just a list of product names / lines is fine for now.

– Flagship beers
– Seasonal beers
– Specialty beers 
– Rotator beer series
– And on and on — however you organize your beer portfolio.

Next, do the same thing for any Fourth Category brands you have in the mix, e.g. seltzer, RTDs, Hop Water, spirits, cannabis, hard cider.

Next, list out all of your locations, Co-branded products, special events, community partnerships and anything else that represents either an important touchpoint with your customers or a revenue stream (e.g. merch, catering, event center). 

And finally, list out any upcoming products you’ve been thinking about — new beers, NA products, different categories, locations, acquisitions, etc. 

Step 2: Group your products

Now that you have all of your products listed out, you can start to intuitively group them in a chart form. 

The form your map takes will shift based on how you organize your portfolio and brands. A Branded House portfolio might fit on one page whereas a House of Brands, or even a Branded House with a few Sub Brands in the mix might span several pages. 

That’s okay. There’s no right or wrong here. (And again, this is all iterative.)

This will be intuitive, but to get you started, think big 30k foot view categories. 

– Beer (under which you might have flagships, an IPA series, seasonals, barrel aged releases, variety packs, contract beers, etc.)
– Seltzer (individual SKUs, variety pack, etc.)
– Sprits (gin, bourbon, RTDs, NA, etc.)
– Hop Water (cores, variety pack, etc.)
– Non Alcoholic (NA Beer, Hop Water)
– Venues / Hospitality (Taprooms, Brewpubs, Catering, Event Center)
 

—

We put together a template doc to help you lay this all out. If you have Illustrator, you can drop this PDF right in there and edit as needed. If not, you can print this out and go to town with a marker as well.

(Above): To reiterate an earlier point, this template probably won’t work *perfectly* for what you’ve got going on. Our goal is to give you a head start for mapping this all out.

Chop this up and make it your own, or, create your own map entirely. 

—

 

Step 3: Specify an overarching model

Unless you know your overarching Brand Architecture model from the jump, we usually save this step for last because all the work you did in steps 1 and 2 (along with your broader Brand Strategy) will dictate the correct model(s). 

Your choices here are: Branded House, House of Brands or a Hybrid Brand. 

For what it’s worth, we rarely see our clients fall neatly into one of these buckets. Even a smaller brewery that might produce a few thousand bbl per year can have a fairly complex Architecture map (with fourth category brands, Sub Brands, Line Extensions and multiple locations).

But again, that’s why this is valuable. This process helps you wrangle everything and spot areas for improvement. 

Hit the links above to read about each of these systems and pick which ever one seems closest to what you’re trying to build. 

(Above): Read The Beyond Beer Handbook for a full rundown on this entire subject.

And if you take our year end survey, you can grab your own copy (or copies for your team) for 50% off — only a few days left.

—

 

Wrapping up 

And I’ll leave you to it. There’s more that goes into this process, but we’ll circle back to it later in 2025 with a round 2. Or, if we sell enough copies of The Beyond Beer Handbook, we’ll include a full step-by-step guide, complete with multiple templates, in the second edition. 

For now, give this a spin and see how it shapes up. (And let me know how it goes.)

—

Real quick before we break, I wanted to thank you for reading BBT this year.

This newsletter started out as an experiment — an insider report we only shared with clients — and quickly grew to become much larger that that.

After client work, BBT is one of my favorite things we work on.

CODO has a lot of exciting things on deck headed into 2025 — long overdue case studies, big speaking engagements, purchasing a building, hosting CBC in Indianapolis, our annual trends report, a revamped podcast + a brand refresh.

I’m glad you’re here following along. 

Shoot me an email if you'd like to discuss working together next year, and otherwise, have a lovely break. 

– Isaac / CODO

Hi, there.

If you haven't already, please take our year end survey (less than 3 minutes).

This will help to shape our content in 2025. As a thanks for your time, we'll give you a 50% off code for any of our books — use it as many times as you want.

Thanks! 


—


Your brand identity and packaging are crucial for standing out, building equity longterm and driving sales. But these are just one part of your brewery’s branding and marketing puzzle.

Once you’ve got these components squared away, you have to continually build your brand(s). This includes internally with your customer service and behind the scenes relationships (with distributors and retailers), and branches out from there to your social media presence, point of sale (POS) materials, merch, environmental design and more traditional channels like out of home.

A big part of all of this — of understanding what stories you should be telling — is defining your Key Messaging / Communication Pillars.

That’s a churched up way of saying which big ideas you want people to associate with your brewery’s brand.

– What do you want people to think about when they hear your brewery’s name?

– How do you want them to describe your brand to their friends?

– What big ideas and differentiators do you want them to remember (when it comes time to buy some beer)?

We’ve studied this topic for years and have often found convoluted approaches for framing these messaging and brand personality out in the wild — needlessly complicated prompts, quizzes and flow charts, all designed to help you get to the bottom of, er, you. 

In today’s BBT issue, I’m going to give you a few simple tools we (CODO) use to help our clients frame their Key Messaging Pillars. 

Let’s get to it. 

(Above): Key Messaging Pillars for Birdsmouth Beer Co.

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Part 1: How to frame your Key Messaging Pillars 

One of our favorite ways of sussing out compelling ideas in our work is to have everyone on your team answer this question: 

If you could go into someone’s head and put 3 or 4 big messages about your brand in there, what would those be?

(That’s it. Really.)

Here are some examples we’ve seen in our project work:

– We are one of Canada’s original craft breweries. 
– We are the quintessential Upper Peninsula beer brand.
– We source all of our ingredients directly from Germany. 
– We are one of San Diego’s most beloved breweries. 
– We are your go-to fridge stocker beer.
– We are the no-frills Midwest cocktail company. 
– We use tech to grow the best cannabis in Michigan.
– We are Oregon’s original craft brewery. 
– We are the iconic Wisconsin Supper Club. 
– We deliver wild Alaskan seafood directly to your door.
– We make cider from apples grown on our family farm. 
– We build our own whiskey barrels in-house at our cooperage.

Your first few attempts will likely result in dozens of ideas. Work with your team (or branding partner) to winnow this down to 3 or 4 big ideas. Why 3 to 4? Because people have limited bandwidth, so less, but better, is the goal here. 

How can you kill-or-combine your way to getting this list leaner?


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Move beyond table stakes 

It’s important to challenge yourself to think beyond table stakes when revising these messages. 

We see this come up constantly when defining brand values and Key Communication Pillars. These are the sorts of ideas that, while maybe true for your brewery, can also be claimed by (a lot of) your competition. A few examples:

– “We make high quality beer.”
– “We only use the best ingredients.”
– “We’re community-focused.”
– “We’re environmentally responsible.”

(I’m still waiting for the day a brewery hangs its hat on brewing objectively flawed beer for people they don’t like. “Flawed beer for flawed people” … is this anything?)

Again, these things (high quality beer) are likely true and should guide how you act behind closed doors. But we’re looking for true and compelling differentiators around which you can build your brand.

Once you have a grasp on these big ideas, you can start to frame out what brand personality and voice best fits your brand.

(Above): Key Communication Pillars, brand personality cues and Brand Essence write-ups for Ghost Note Brewing and Plain Spoke Cocktails.

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Part 2: How to define your Brand Personality 

Your brand personality is exactly as it sounds — this is how you carry yourself, both online and in the real world. 

This manifests most immediately in your day-to-day social media posts and in your own/on-premise customer interactions. From there, it spreads to all of your downstream touchpoints.

We help our clients sketch this out with another prompt. Ask everyone on your team:

If your brand were a person, what sort of personality traits would it have?

Here are some examples we’ve seen in our work: 

– We are wry and clever.
– We are blue collar. 
– We are experimental. 
– We are dedicated craftsmen. 
– We are outdoorsy trout bums. 
– We’re good hearted stoners.  
– We are worldly travelers. 
– We are foodies.
– We are shade tree mechanics. 
– We are busy suburban dads. 
– We are twenty something dog moms. 
– We are natural tinkerers. 

A quick process note here. In our earlier years, we phrased this question as: If your brand were a celebrity, who would it be? But we ended up dropping the celebrity qualifier because it would, like clockwork, lead to one of two possible answers. 

1. Some derivation of, “Oh, I don’t watch tv, so I have no idea.”

2. Or, someone would answer with one of the same 7 or 8 people. (It’s wild, we’ve heard this collection of people on several dozen brewery branding projects). This list included:

Bill Murray, Matthew McConaughey, Ryan Reynolds, Paul Rudd, Robert Downey Jr. (sometimes Iron Man), Ron Swanson (not Nick Offerman), Woody Harrelson and sometimes Tom Hanks

(Putting this out into the universe: If any brewery out there sees themselves as Ian McShane in Deadwood, hit me up. We should talk.)
 

—

You’ll want to go through the same process of editing here as when you frame your Key Communication Pillars. And we aim to get this list down to six to eight personality traits. 

This amount gives you a cohesive foundation, but also enough room to flex and/or code switch as the channel or situation calls for. 

(Above): Brand personality and Essence write-ups for two taproom-focused breweries and a boutique hotel in New Glarus, Wisconsin. (Stay tuned for case studies on all these projects.)

—
 

A few other questions you can tack on to this brand-as-a-person line of thinking include: 

– Is this a man or a woman? 
– How old are they? 
– What does this person do for a living?
– Do they have a sense of humor?
– What are they into? (What are they obnoxiously passionate about?)
– What is their biggest strength / weakness? 
– What kind of shoes do they wear? 
– What is their biggest pet peeve? 
– Who is their favorite band?

Note: We’ve never focused on Brand Archetypes in our Brand Strategy process, though that’s not an indictment on that approach. We’ve just found that defining your brand voice and personality by humanizing your brand in other ways to be a clear path of arriving at those same ideas.

Cody and I discussed this a while back on the BBT Podcast. That conversation start’s around the 17 minute mark, if you’d like to listen in: 

> Are Brand Archetypes Complete Bullshit?

—
 

I’ll leave this here because at this point, we start to veer into brand voice. And this topic deserves its own issue down the line. 

So let’s wrap this up.

(Above): Key Communication Pillars for Prost Brewing.

—
 

Wrapping up

Building a strong, differentiated brand identity mission critical for the longterm health and success of your brewery.

But remember, your brand is more than just your logo or packaging — it's the culmination of all the experiences people have with your brand and your reputation in their minds. A big part of shaping this story lies in defining your Key Messaging Pillars and crafting your overall narrative so people understand who you are, what you stand for, and why your brewery should be their go-to.

If you give this process the time it deserves, you’ll create a strong foundation for all of your marketing efforts and set yourself up to create life long fans.

Hi, there.

If you haven't already, please take our year end survey (less than 3 minutes).

This will help to shape our content in 2025. As a thanks for your time, we'll give you a 50% off code for any of our books — use it as many times as you want.

Thanks! 


—


Today I want to talk about the House of Brands. 

This is a common Brand Architecture model amongst larger beer & beverage conglomerates (Molson Coors, Boston Beer, ABI, Diageo, et al.) where having a diverse line of products that span multiple categories, price points and distribution territory adds up to a robust portfolio.

But over the last few years, we’ve seen more of our smaller* craft clients lean into the House of Brands model as well, by launching targeted stand alone brands (e.g. a light beer brand, an RTD cocktail, a spirit brand, etc.).

*Note: smaller in this case can be anywhere from 1k bbl to 20k. They’re smaller relative to ABI. (Aren't we all?)

So this is a broadly applicable approach. 

Let’s start by defining the House of Brands and then get into some possible use cases for your brewery as well as some important caveats to be mindful of in case you think this is a good approach for your next product launch.

(Above): Read more about the House of Brands Architecture model here.

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What is a House of Brands? 

A House of Brands architecture is a collection of (mostly) disparate, independent brands with little-to-no ties between each other or to a corporate brand.

In this approach, each brand has its own value proposition, messaging, and positioning, and is completely independent as far as the consumer is concerned. 

And a quick note: We say “corporate” in this case because “parent” denotes some manner of a relationship with an extension (e.g. You extend your parent brand when launching a Sub or Endorsed Brand). In a House of Brands model, there is no parent brand connection whatsoever.

This approach allows you to target different consumers and segments with niche brands and products that are tailored to their specific needs and values without competing with other brands in the portfolio. This makes for a more robust overall business.

Traditionally the stock and trade of mega corporations like Procter and Gamble and Unilever, this can be a valuable concept for craft breweries to employ depending on their product mix, volume and sales goals as well.

(Above:) Prominent portfolio brands (House of Brands) from big to not-quite-as-big (but still kind of big). While we're here, I predict that we'll see a rise in Holding Companies over the coming years that spin up expressly to purchase and produce Legacy Brewery IP. 

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Benefits & use cases for a House of Brands model 

A House of Brands approach allows you to offer products to highly-targeted niche audiences without worrying about how to adapt your parent brand to the task

By creating an entirely new brand, you are free to explore each product individually under a House of Brands model without being governed by (or concerned with) any of your parent brand’s equity. Each product is able to have its own unique value proposition and attract different customer segments. And none of this will be confusing, because you are not beholden to a broader brand narrative. 

You can have a functional beverage along with a hard cider and an Imperial IPA and an NA beer in the same portfolio and no one will bat an eye (because they’re not positioned as being part of the same family). 

You can quickly seize market opportunities because you bypass all the work (and worry) of making sure your parent brand works in a new context.

The House of Brands approach allows you to be more agile, rapidly executing on new opportunities without considering what that might mean for your parent brand. You are free to move on an appropriate idea without being encumbered with existing equity or customer expectations. 

In this way, agility can be just as important as having a great product that is correctly marketed and positioned. Being first to market in a particular category can go a long way towards ensuring long term success.

(Above:) Virginia Beer Co wanted to build a light beer brand  that could travel to further afield markets where their parent brand might not carry as much weight. Enter Cold Drinking Beer.

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Caveats


Building a House of Brands can be challenging for smaller breweries 

If the biggest benefit of building a House of Brands model is the speed and ease at which you can bring new products to markets, the main drawback is how inefficient and expensive this can be. 

Here are the two main challenges a smaller outfit will face when trying to build a House of Brands.

A House of Brands is costly to build 

A House of Brands takes a lot of capital to construct because you’re simultaneously building multiple brands. This can start lean, but over time, as a new brand grows, you’ll have to develop (and maintain) new names, brand identities, websites, and perhaps even dedicated corporate structure and staff for each standalone brand.

Simply put, out of all the Brand Architecture models you can use at your brewery, the House of Brands requires the most work, investment and follow-through. 

To give every brand in your portfolio a fair shake basically amounts to setting up structures within your organization that can dedicate bespoke effort to each individual offering. Do not underestimate how much work (and budget) this will take to pull off correctly.

Capacity, capacity, capacity

The second big challenge is capacity. Capital is going to be important no matter what scale your brewery is at, but we’ve found capacity to be a more immediate governor for how effectively breweries can launch new standalone brands. 

For some real world project work, this usually looks like:

A brewery launched a hard seltzer stand alone brand and found that they need to bring it more in-line with their parent brand for marketing budget, distribution and/or consumer mindshare reasons. 

If you’re part of a small team at your brewery—of if you ARE the marketing team—then you may not have the time it takes to properly build a new brand.

(Above:) Sierra Nevada, Minneapolis Cider Co. and Schilling Cider have all released new standalone products over the last few years, effectively shifting their corporate Architecture to a House of Brands. 

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Wrapping up


People aren’t stupid 

Here’s a final caveat that’s not related to capacity and OpEx budgeting. 

A House of Brands doesn’t fully insulate your larger business from blowback. We saw this through the Bud Light fallout in summer 2023 as some of ABIs other brands saw losses and bad comps as well. 

Regular, non-beer industry folks walking around might not know that Twisted Tea is owned by Boston Beer Co. But this sort of knowledge isn’t really hidden anymore. A quick search can reveal who owns a brand. And if you have a big blowup — a PR disaster, a QC issue, etc. — you should expect your fans and the media to quickly spread this info. 

I’m not sure this idea is applicable to you, or any of the other 9,500+ folks who read BBT, but to draw a fine point here — building a House of Brands isn’t an excuse to launch a product that you’re not proud of, or that lacks integrity. 

Anything you put out into the world still needs to adhere to your personal and corporate values.

Otherwise, what are you building?

Hi, there!

A few quick notes before we get started:

1. Please take our year end survey (less than 3 minutes). This will help to shape our content in 2025. As a thanks for your time, we'll give you a 50% off code for any of our books (use it as many times as you want).

2. For a more immersive experience, read this entire case study over on our site.

3. We recorded a podcast with AleSmith that dives into why they're so bullish on hard cider right now. Give that episode a listen here.

Alright, let's talk hard cider.

Breweries across the country are continuing to release Beyond Beer / Fourth Category products in a bid to better serve their fans while also building a more robust business. 

Hard seltzer, RTD cocktails, spirits, Hop Water and NA products are all common starting points here. But one category in which CODO is seeing a sharp uptick right now is hard cider. 

We first wrote about this trend back this spring, and have seen this ramp up in our project work ever since. 

The latest brewery to venture into the hard cider space is AleSmith. 

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Founded back in 1995, AleSmith Brewing is an iconic San Diego craft brewery. They’re also one of the largest breweries in the country, ranking 65th in 2023.

AleSmith’s hard cider has been an in-house staple around their brewery for a while, and in early 2024, their team reached out to CODO to help brand, position and officially release this line in package. We’re going to give you a look at this process today. 

This case study will cover the following:

– Project context (Brand Architecture, goals, constraints)

– Our art direction process (Wrangling big ideas and moving parts)

– Initial sketching, revisions and finalizing everything for launch

Let’s get to it. 

(Above): AleSmith's current packaging and brand identity. 

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AleSmith’s project context & Brand Architecture 

When deciding how to launch an Extension, it’s important that your brewery look at a few things:

– Your broader Brand Strategy
– Your Brand Architecture
– Your parent brand’s positioning
– Precedent for how you’ve handled similar releases in the past (if applicable)
– The possibility of future growth and new product development that could blossom from this new product

> Check out the Beverage Extension Assessment Tool to see CODO’s in-house rubric for positioning new products.

After discussing and exploring all of these considerations with the AleSmith team, we determined that their hard cider should land somewhere between a straight Brand Extension or a Sub Brand. 

Why?

AleSmith has built a diverse Branded House. And unless a new product comes along that dramatically breaks from their traditional approach (classic, balanced, true-to-style beers and products, decidedly no trend chasing), then it makes sense to keep their cider line under their Branded House. 

But how to extend their name? Would a “linked name” like CiderSmith be too much?

Yes. Yes it would.

We all felt that keeping the AleSmith name (and core logo) front and center would anchor this extension from a visual equity standpoint. From there, we could riff on their qualifier and tagline.

Some initial options we considered were:

– AleSmith Cider Factory — and the far simpler — AleSmith Craft Ciders

– We also liked the subtle tagline shift: Hand-Forged Ales Ciders

– And we knew we wanted to replace the glass on their iconic anvil logo with an apple

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With these broad strokes in place, we began working through art direction to make sure we understood exactly what the AleSmith team was envisioning and how this could all come together to stand out from the rest of their competitive set.

(Above): Check out The Beyond Beer Handbook to learn more about how you can *safely* leverage your brewery's brand to launch other segments. 

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Art Direction & Mood boards

Once we had our initial parameters in place, we were able to jump right into Mood Boarding. 

Note: This is a lighter touch, faster exercise than formal Brand Strategy and really only works when a brewery has an established Brand Strategy and attractive brand identity. AleSmith came to the table with both of these things in place, which meant we could focus more on their cider’s look and feel and move fast. 

> Read more about the difference between Brand Strategy and art direction here.

We developed three Mood Boards (collages to art direct what AleSmith’s cider line could look and feel like). 

Here are snippets of copy pulled from our presentation along with some additional notes on aesthetics and messaging: 

– Clean & Classic: Clean and simple. Lots of white space. Confident, reliable and feels unmistakably like an AleSmith brand. This direction was the most congruent with their existing identity. 

– Illustrative & Apple-forward: This direction tackles the goal of immediately reading as a cider instead of a beer. We considered doing this with a subtle, tonal pattern to differentiate from the rest of AleSmith’s portfolio. (More on this idea here in a sec.)

– Accessible Luxury: This direction positions AleSmith’s hard ciders as premium as you can get without being a snob about it. But this idea was dressed down with more tried and true beer iconography (seals, ribbons, taglines, violators, etc.). Hints of gold and bronze, aged cream (vs. stark white) and deep reds, browns and rich blacks. It was also slightly European, which felt right given AleSmith’s broader history and approach to new product development.

(Above): AleSmith's Mood Boards. Learn more about our art direction process here.

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Revised Mood Board 

The Accessible Luxury idea resonated with the AleSmith team. We were pretty close after this first look, so after some minor tweaks to the Mood Board (bringing in some of the patterning elements from the second direction, dialing down some of the more extreme quality cues, etc.), we were approved to begin sketching. 

(Above): AleSmith's final mood board. This guided all of our internal sketching and concept development. 

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Initial sketching

Here are a few points to highlight from our initial sketching. 

1. Hierarchy was important: These cans had to immediately read as an AleSmith product, while at the same time, clearly read as being hard cider. 

It’s important for AleSmith fans to not mistakenly grab a cider, thinking it’s beer. And on the flip side, we need to tell AleSmith’s regular drinkers that this hard cider is good to go because it’s made by AleSmith.


2. Industrial vs. Traditional (on adhering to, and rising above, category canon): This was a dueling idea from our Mood Boarding process. AleSmith has an enormous production facility with acres of beautiful stainless tanks — someone called it a "Willy Wonka beer factory" during our initial research. And their internal team likes this sort of messaging as well.

Here, “industrial” or "factory" doesn’t mean bland and mass market, but rather, efficient, clean and rigorously made. So one of our directions leaned more into this idea while the other explored a more traditional look you might expect in the hard cider category — more texture, more organic detail and more provenance.


3. Riffing on their logo (and more hierarchy considerations): We knew we wanted to replace the glass in AleSmith’s iconic logo with an apple. This is a fun, if slightly on the nose way of immediately orienting someone looking at this packaging in a cold box — Ahh, it’s a hard cider! 

This presented another hierarchy challenge: This is a subtle change, so we probably need to blow this thing up to be the main art on pack so people actually see it. But then, does that compete with the existing AleSmith logo? And the style (Imperial, Traditional Dry, etc.)? And the ABV? 

This balance doesn’t seem like that big a deal, but if you get it wrong, even slightly wrong, the entire composition can fall flat. 

This doesn’t just mean your packaging isn’t as beautiful as it could be, but that someone might be less inclined to pick it up and throw it in their cart when shopping. So getting this squared away is a big deal. 


4. How to differentiate within a Branded House: One challenge you can run into when building a Branded House is that over time, it becomes harder to create entirely new, compelling packaging that doesn’t look like something you’ve previously released.

This doesn’t mean the baseline design doesn’t work well, but functionally, there are only so many colors you can choose before your cans start looking similar to another existing SKU or just unattractive (due to clashing colors). 

This issue is exacerbated when using a Monolithic Branded House template, where everything looks nearly identical, save for color and copy changes. (e.g. Rhinegeist, Monday Night, Prost). 

"We can’t use that green because we used it on an LTO can last spring. Or, this shade of red is too close to our Hazy." Etc.

—

This was an issue here because AleSmith has a diverse portfolio with hundreds of individual cans developed over the years. And at a quick glance, there’s not much obvious white space for their next release, beer or beyond. 

One opening we saw within AleSmith’s broader portfolio — and their broader competitive set — was to use patterning as a focal point.

Their cans all lean clean and classic, with their core logo front and center and a fanciful name and style across the bottom. There's some variance here and there, but by and large, you know an AleSmith can when you see one. 

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These points, along with our refined Mood Board guided our initial concept development. 

We presented the work (see below), the AleSmith team LOVED it, and we moved directly into revisions.

(Shoutout to veteran CODO Senior Designer Ryan H and recent hire Brock for absolutely housing this project. Great design work all around.)

Revisions 

Our first presentation was so well received, that we really only had a few small points to iron out from the AleSmith team. 

A few of these included: 

– AleSmith wanted to add a Dry-to-Sweet scale as an easy reference for consumers 
– They wanted to bring the banner logo lockup from Direction 2 into the first option
– They felt the dark imperial can was too heavy and looked undrinkable
– After seeing it, they decided that AleSmith Cider “Factory,” while fun, didn’t feel right in the cider space. So we went with the simpler “Craft Ciders” qualifier. 

Beyond that, most of what we continued to tweak over the next few weeks was small stuff that we wanted to resolve in order to get this up to CODO’s standard. 

So lots of small details that no one other than our team will ever notice like:

– Simplifying the pattern and border line weights
– Getting the tri-color motif on the back panel to be more consistent from can to can 
– Making sure the sweetness scale reads clearly at a small size
– Re-styling the Nutrition Facts label so it’s not an eyesore 
– Thinking ahead to how we’ll use colors on possible follow-on releases without breaking this clean system 

Final points

From here, we got everything wrapped up and saved out for production. But here are a few other ideas to end on.

1. Earn your keep: AleSmith invested in design for this cider line, but is putting these out in 4-pk 16oz cans to start. Their team wants these ciders to earn their keep before investing in more expensive carton packaging. 

Even though it pains my tender designer heart, I think this is a smart approach. Starting lean and making sure you have something your fans actually want is a more conservative and realistic approach in today’s Bev Alc market. 

But for what it’s worth, I suspect you’ll see these in cartons by late 2025. These ciders are lovely and AleSmith has a great sales team bringing them to market. So stay tuned.

2. Secondary assets (getting more mileage out of your packaging): We developed a lot of cool elements on this packaging that lends itself to retail activation and merch. Some of this was by design, and some of it was by accident. 

These sorts of components are a clear deliverable when building a Modular Brand Identity System.

But it’s a good idea to keep an eye out for opportunities like this when working on packaging only engagements. This helps you get more bang for your buck while making downstream promotion and marketing easier.

—

These hard ciders are rolling out in San Diego and throughout Southern California as we speak.
 

Wrapping up 

I didn't focus on it throughout this article, but another compelling angle to this product launch is how AleSmith is continuing to stay relevant as a 30 year old brewery. (Not to mention one in the s-t-a-c-k-e-d San Diego market.)

They're doing this, not by chasing trends and throwing new products at the wall to see what sticks, but rather, through thoughtful innovation and launching new segments that feel right.

Think, "Should AleSmith launch X?" vs. "Can AleSmith launch X?"

They’re leading with their Brand here, and I think more Legacy Breweries should do the same.


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Drop CODO a line if your brewery is interested in releasing a Hard Cider and would like help figuring out your Strategy, Architecture and design. We’d love to help you work through that.

Hi there, and welcome to the final issue of CODO's package refresh series.

In issues 1 and 2, we outlined why package refreshes are trending right now, and how they differ from brand refreshes and rebrands. 

Today, I want to explore some nitty gritty process details that will ensure you can successfully refresh your packaging.

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I’m not going to give you a step-by-step process for how to refresh your packaging here. 

This would make for a really short issue: Strategy (maybe) > define your equity > initial sketching & presentation > revisions > finalize > print > launch > profit! 

Instead, I thought it’d be useful to explore what CODO has learned after handling dozens of package refreshes over the last few years. 

So, how should you think about art direction, stakeholder involvement, visual and Brand Equity, potential landmines you could encounter along the way as well as how to launch your refreshed packaging. 

Let’s get right into it by discussing art direction.

1

Brand Strategy vs. Art Direction

Let’s return to our central thesis: Package refreshes offer a lot of upside expressly because you can (sometimes) bypass more costly and time-consuming strategy work.

Assuming you're in a position where you can skip a more thorough Strategy phase, this still leaves the important task of framing your art direction ahead of your refresh.

On Art Direction 

Art direction is the process of identifying all the visual cues and ideas that should be explored during your refresh. This can include things like typography, colors, textures, compositional considerations and overall look and feel and vibe.

A quick process note here: When CODO works through Brand Strategy, we roll art direction into the end of that doc. So after we’ve explored your positioning, audience definition, key communication pillars, brand personality, voice and Essence.

Once we've defined these foundational elements, we’re in a good place to have a fun conversation with our clients about what all of this stuff could look like.

If we’re eschewing proper Brand Strategy when handling a package refresh, then we jump straight to art direction by building and discussing mood boards.

Mood Boards ( for orienting our teams & quick prototyping )

A Mood Board is a collage that art directs a compelling idea.  

The task at hand — the actual deliverables we’re gearing up to design — will dictate what we gather and focus the boards around.

So if we’re refreshing your identity and packaging, we’ll gather lots of examples that show those sorts of things. If we’re developing custom merch, or a website or a built environment, then we’ll gather images that highlight those sorts of things. 

Mood Boards have two distinct benefits in our process. The first is that they’re a great way of getting your team’s vision out of your heads and onto paper.

Don’t tell us you want your cans to look “vintage.” That can mean the 1880s or the 1980s. Show me what vintage means to you.

Mood Boards are a phenomenal tool for orienting our teams to ensure we’re on the same page before moving into the design phase. 

The second benefit here is that they allow you to quickly prototype different aesthetic directions.

If you’re working with a creative partner that is haphazardly shepherding your project, they might jump right into design and come back in a few weeks with 5 or 6 options for you to consider. But 4 or 5 (or 6) of those concepts might not be appropriate.

So everyone’s time (and money and energy) is wasted.

Mood Boards prevent this by allowing you to “try on” a look in your head and immediately gut check it against everything you already know about your brewery’s brand.

Does this direction feel right? Yes? Then let’s explore some packaging concepts that look like this. 

This gives you an invaluable set of guard rails as you move into the design phase and is even more critical without formal Strategy to fall back on.

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Now that we’ve discussed art direction, let’s move outside of your brewery’s walls and explore how your competitive set should inform your package refresh.

(Above): Formal Brand Strategy vs. Mood Boards. Strategy frames your brewery's positioning, audience, key messaging, brand voice, personality and values. Mood Boards focus strictly on surface level look and feel.

Stay tuned for case studies on both of these projects, by the way — one is a legacy brewery rebrand and the other is how we helped one of American's oldest craft breweries launch a hard cider Brand Extension.

—

 

2

Competitive set audit 

Note: At CODO, the competitive audit happens during the Brand Strategy and/or art direction process. But I’m breaking this point out here separately to examine it on its own. 

—

One thing we want to be mindful of as we move from the Art Direction phase into the design leg of a package refresh is what your competitive set looks like.

A competitive set audit is simply taking stock of your competition to see where they fall on a variety of points.

This can include price and package formats, beer and beverage styles, overall business models (e.g. taproom focused vs. heavy off-premise push), Brand Architecture models, prevalent sales channels, and more germane to a package refresh, their packaging aesthetics and softer things like their brand voice and personality. 

How does your competition show up on shelf? And are there any clear opportunities for visual differentiation?

This process can include walking your local set, and visiting retailers like bottle shops, liquor stores, chain retail and on-premise accounts (whatever is applicable to your project and market). You’ll take lots of photos, purchase products as needed and get an overall lay of the land.

(I’m guessing you do this every time you set foot in a grocery or liquor store anyway. I certainly do. But this is a more formal process wherein you’re visiting multiple outlets to grab photos and talk to the retailers.)

On-premise usually isn’t a major consideration during a package refresh, but it never hurts to get an idea of what’s going on in this channel as well: What’s the handle lineup look like, what’s being offered / featured, what sort of POS is your competition using to support their draft program, etc.

You'll also want to work with your distributor(s) to back your field work up with more quantitative data — trends, sales numbers, depletion rates, etc. — to lend some objective data to this mix.

Once you have all this information, you’ll chart it out in a way that allows you to easily make sense of it and aid in whatever decision(s) you’re making. 

The final outcome of this process will be a document that clearly lays out all of your competition’s packaging. You’ll use this to compare package design concepts later on because it lets you see where you could, and shouldn’t, take your brand visually. 

Oh, everyone uses this color, or, no one’s really using can cartons here. Could that be an opportunity? Everything is overly-minimal, or, dear God, it’s all hazy IPAs. Hundreds of them… etc. Perhaps we introduce a lightly-fruited sour beer?

(Above): A quick look at how we share the competitive set audit during a package refresh. Here, we're looking at how our proposed packaging concepts stack up, and stand out, from the rest of your competitors.

(Sorry for the obnoxious redaction. We'll have a case study on this project for you in early 25.)

—
 

A package refresh can be a faster and more affordable process than a thorough rebrand. However, one place you can’t shortcut is your stakeholder management. 

Let’s talk about that now. 
 

3

Process Management: You need to have conversations with the right stakeholders

We treat our package refresh kickoffs no different from our in-depth rebranding projects. When we talk with folks here, we’re still asking the same deep Brand questions, and talk with a variety of stakeholders across your business. 

This starts with your Executive Team, and extends all the way through your chain internally from production folks, front and back of house staff, marketing and sales team members and operations people. It also extends externally to distributor and key retail partners. 

Quick note here: As a general rule, we try to keep our project teams — Executive Teams, in particular — as small as possible. Any more than 5 and I start to get nervous. (And 4 is better than 5.) This isn’t me being a prima donna designer who doesn’t want to have our precious work judged by more people, but rather, a preemptive strike against decision making by committee.

We’ve covered stakeholder and process management in previous BBT issues. Here are a few resources on this topic: 

– Organizing your stakeholders ahead of a refresh [Podcast]

– Who should be involved in your brewery's rebrand [Craft Beer, Rebranded]

4 

Finish strong ( staggered rebrand launch + internal & external alignment )

Launching your package refresh will be an exciting process. This usually requires less handholding and messaging than you’d need when launching a rebrand.

That being said, a lot of what you need to manage when launching a rebrand still applies to a package refresh.

– You still need to engage your key stakeholders early on (via your ABP, plus separate meetings to get your distributors & retailers looped in and excited)

– You still need to plan ahead for production constraints (e.g. factoring in time for production — decorating cans vs. PSLs vs. sleeves, working through dead stock, etc.)

– You still need to put together a social launch campaign

– You need to make sure your retail activation is ready to go, to include updated POS, merch, tap handles, shelf talkers, floor stackers, etc. 

And finally, you’ll likely need to roll this new packaging out as a staggered launch. Revisit our guidance on this brand launch method here.

(Above): Here's a BrewBound article outlining Jai Alai's recent package refresh, including how the Monster Brewing team was thinking about Brand Equity.

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Wrapping up 

When should you plan your next refresh? 

Before 2020, I believed you should use your packaging as long as it was working—for decades, even. I believed you should only make a change when you see something bad happening (e.g. softening sales) and that ideally, your packaging would stand the test of time and become iconic. 

Unfortunately, I don’t think this will cut it today. 

Setting aside an obvious perverse incentive (oh look, the guy who owns a branding firm is telling you to continually invest in branding and packaging), I now think there’s a lot of merit to refreshing your packaging more often. 

And we’ve heard this idea directly from brewery CMOs, distributors and retailers in our project work.

Today, I think the path looks more like this: 

1. Get your Brand Strategy and core identity completely dialed in

2. Refresh your packaging on a 4 to 5 (ish) year clip based on your sales trends and shifts in the competitive landscape

3. And don’t sleep on all the other moving parts needed to build your brand — your seasonal and LTO program, continually refreshing your merch, locking in your ABP and distributor priorities, etc. 

You should consider this work iterative. 

The need to stay top of mind with your fans and other key partners like retailers and distributors — to stay relevant and exciting — will be crucial for thriving over the coming years. 

Your packaging, like your Brand itself, is a living, breathing thing. It is never truly done. It is just done for now. 

—

I hope this series helped your team think about how a package refresh can help you thrive and grow and sell a whole lot of beer.

Thanks for read along. I’m glad you’re here.

—

Drop me a line if you'd like to discuss your brewery's packaging.

***

Morning. Before we get started, I wanted to signal boost the North Carolina Craft Brewers Guild's guidance for how you can support breweries impacted by Hurricane Helene. Here are direct links to their recommended local charity orgs if you're inclined to help.

***

This series is a Beer Branding Trends Newsletter exclusive. If there's someone on your team you think would benefit from reading along, please forward this email to them or have them sign up here so they receive everything.

***

Hi, there. 

Welcome to the second issue of our package refresh series. 

Last time we spoke, we laid out why package refreshes are such an important trend in the brewing industry right now. 

Today, we’re going to explore the line between package refreshes, brand refreshes and rebrands, why the difference between these processes matters, and how to ensure you're addressing the right problem in the first place.

Let’s start by laying out how we frame any conversation we have with our clients ahead of any revamp.

—

Evolution vs. Revolution

We love the heuristic, “Evolution vs. Revolution,” because it helps to understand our client’s intent. 

Here's a passage on this from Craft Beer, Rebranded:

Are you completely reshaping your brewery’s culture and positioning? Are we throwing your logo out with the bathwater and creating wholesale visual change across the board? Or, are we building on decades of work and hard-earned goodwill to make subtle updates in a natural progression? Would it be a misstep to jettison the visual signifiers and concepts behind your company as it stands? Or, does it make more sense to build upon, hone and enhance what already exists?

—

It’s okay if you’re not sure which path is correct at this point, but by sitting with this idea and debating it internally amongst your team, you can usually get a good idea of what problems you want to address and what you'd like to achieve through this process in the time it takes to enjoy a few beers.

Okay, now that we’ve got some fuzzy, philosophical considerations out of the way, let’s lay out some concrete definitions. 

Rebrand 

A rebrand represents a shift in your core messaging and positioning. This starts with upstream business and brand strategy considerations, including your long term vision—deciding what spaces you want to compete in, how your brewery is positioned, how you wish to be perceived, and defining your most compelling and ownable differentiator(s), brand values and key messaging pillars.

All of this Brand Strategy, once developed, drives the look and feel of your brand identity and packaging. (This would be “Revolution.”)


—

(Below): There was a profound disconnect between Prost Brewing's brand identity and the beer they made every day. So in 2018, we rebranded this Colorado brewery to better tell this story and present on shelf. Their resulting growth has been fun to watch. Read CODO's original case study on this project here.

Brand Refresh 

By contrast, a brand refresh is more of a visual, surface-level identity update—call it a fresh coat of paint. In this scenario, your brand values and positioning (most of that foundational strategy stuff we're focusing on during a rebrand) still holds true, but your brand identity and packaging may just need some level of updating.

This work will build on, or evolve, your existing identity. So it’s not a sweeping change, but an evolution.


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(Below): Left Field Brewery was in need of a subtle brand refresh. So subtle that, according to our strategy work, "a fan might not even notice a change had taken place." This approach works well when you have a great foundation — positioning, messaging and voice, in particular. Read more about this revamp on our blog.

Package Refresh 

A package refresh, is when you update your packaging on its own while leaving your core brand identity as is. So the end result would be new packaging adorned with your existing logo and broader identity components.

These are tactical projects, and they can make a lot of sense when your brewery’s positioning, messaging and broader brand and brand identity are good-to-go and your packaging just needs a facelift. This process focuses more on addressing annoying pain points and inconsistencies than solving an existential crisis.

Package refreshes work well when:

– Your Brand Strategy (positioning, messaging, values, voice and personality) is compelling and aligns with where you want to take the business in the coming years 

– Your core brand identity is working well (your main mark is strong and recognizable and rounded out with a robust Modular Brand Identity System)

– Sales are flat, but not in a free fall, or…

– Sales are trending up, and you want to capitalize on, and maintain, that momentum 

– Your beer / beverages are as good as they can be (i.e. we’re not attempting to mask a sub par product with great visuals)

– You’ve got a squared away, energized team that’s ready to hit the streets and move some beer

– Market and competitive set changes have presented you with an exciting opportunity (e.g. a competitor closes up shop, wholesaler consolidation has affected you in some way, new advantageous legislation has passed, etc.)

If any of this criteria is met, then a package refresh can be a great investment, especially when compared to a more costly rebrand.

(Above): Fernson Brewing's Brand and brand identity were in good shape. But their team wanted to revamp their packaging to stand more on each SKU's own identity vs. their parent brand itself. 

Read a thorough case study on this package refresh here.

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Now that we've got a shared vocabulary, let’s explore some important nuances of the package refresh process.



1

How big a swing can you take?

Our Evolution vs. Revolution heuristic applies to the package refresh process as well. 

Do you want to subtly evolve your packaging or take a bigger swing? And how should your visual and Brand Equity inform this decision?

Our usual caveat here is that every project, background context and competitive set will differ and therefor call for a different solution, however, I would offer a package refresh doesn’t have to be as limiting as a brand refresh.

In other words, don’t let the term “refresh” limit you here. 

You can change your packaging, even dramatically so, through this process. 

Assuming this is a true package refresh and we’re not updating your brand identity, then your logo, along with any sacrosanct visual equity (e.g. SKU colors, or a long-standing packaging composition) should provide enough continuity to ensure your update doesn’t push too far away from where you stand today. 

In this way, a package refresh can be an opportunity to take a bigger departure from where your packaging currently sits, so long as that aligns with your project and positioning goals. 

Our work with Fernson Brewing (shown above) is a great example of a package refresh that dramatically departs from their previous packaging's look and feel.
 

Your equity calls for a refresh. 

One counter to everything I just laid out — so, an argument against making too drastic a change — would be if your packaging has enough visual equity that you have to evolve this look through your update. 

We’ve explored visual and Brand Equity at length on this newsletter and podcast. In the interest of keeping this issue somewhat short, you can revisit some of our most popular pieces on these concepts below:

– What is Brand Equity, really?

– Defining your Brand Equity: Fast & Slow + Companion Podcast 

– When to jettison your Brand Equity


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The risk of pushing too far and not honoring your visual and Brand Equity through a package refresh is real. People can easily lose track of you on shelf, or become confused and/or alienated by the change. And with thousands of other options immediately at their disposal, they can simply move on without a second thought.

But if you see a big enough opportunity, or if that equity doesn't align with where you want to take your brand over the coming years, then don't be overly-precious about it. 

Again, your project context — your brewery’s Brand Strategy, your competitive set, your project goals, pain points and broader vision for your business — will all dictate whether or not this is a strategically-sound path. 

(Above): Our package refresh work with Tinker Coffee is a great example where, though there was a good amount of visual equity at hand, it didn't make sense to carry that through to the new look and feel. 

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2

Brand Strategy (to invest or not invest?)

I’ve hinted at this a few times and would like to address it head on now. 

If we had our druthers — and if budget and timeline were never a limiting factor — we would work through formal Brand Strategy on every major engagement. 

But one of the biggest reasons why your brewery might consider a package refresh is that you can occasionally get away with not working through formal Brand Strategy. This means you’re looking at a faster overall project timeline and can potentially save tens of thousands of dollars in Strategy work.

But back to our earlier point here, in order for this to work, you have to be 100% confident that your brewery's positioning, key messaging, values, brand voice and personality and identity system are all in a solid place and will help you build your brand over the coming years. 

You need to be sure that a package refresh is actually what’s needed to solve whatever problem is that you want to address in the first place. 

Where these projects can falter

The reason we push for strategy as often as we do is that without working through that process, there’s no mechanism for your team (or your design partner) to verify that you’re actually correct about your Brand and brand identity being good to go.

So you could kick off a package refresh, only to realize later on that there’s a deeper issue at hand. This will require a mid-to-late stage regroup. And even if your team is able to manage this and unwind the problem, this isn’t ideal. 

—

Of course, you can be right. 

We’ve worked with some of the brightest minds throughout the beer and beverage industry — folks I wouldn’t hesitate to hire if given the chance. So this isn’t a critique of you and your ability to measure your brand’s effectiveness.

It's more a matter of perspective.

Working every day at the brewery means you’re closer to your brand and business than any outsider can ever be. And this closeness can hinder your ability to be objective about your business (or more germane to our discussion here, how well your Brand and brand identity are performing).

My advice here is to be open to using Brand Strategy as a diagnostic tool to make sure a package refresh will help you accomplish your goals. 

(Above): Brand Strategy doc we developed to build the Cold Drinking Beer brand. We'll dive more into the difference between Brand Strategy and Art Direction in the final issue in this series. 

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My biggest caution before you embark on your package refresh:

3

Make sure you don’t need to solve a Brand problem 

This is so important that it bears repeating: A Package refresh can be a great investment IF your brand and Brand Strategy are on a strong foundation.

Are you facing a surface-level packaging (and portfolio and competitive set) problem? Or, is there a deeper brand problem at hand?

Some things that point to a more surface level issue:

– Your packaging is inconsistent 

– Your naming convention is inconsistent

– Several key competitors have recently rebranded or updated their packaging 

– Your packaging hierarchy is confusing

– Your packaging hasn’t been updated for several years 

– You’re seeing flat (to slightly declining) sales 

– Your packaging looks terrible (no need to sugar coat this)

Some things that point to a deeper, upstream positioning and Brand issue:

– You have no clear, compelling story

– You’re chasing trends (in beer and the Fourth Category)

– Your distributor and retail partners aren’t bought into your brand 

– You’re seeing a steep decline in sales 

– You feel like you’re reinventing the wheel with each new release 

– Your portfolio lacks focus and clear priorities 


If you’re dealing with problems from the former group, then a package refresh can be a phenomenal option to increase your sales. 

If you’re dealing with more existential problems from the latter group, don’t fret. These can be resolved as well, but it will take more than a package revamp to get you where you need to be. 

(Above): Grab a copy of Craft Beer, Rebranded Book Bundle if you're not sure whether a refresh or a formal rebrand is most appropriate for your brewery. (And don't forget to save $15 with the code above). 

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Wrapping up

A package refresh can be a great option if your brand identity and strategy are working well. But if they’re not, a refresh will likely not have the impact you’re after. And if that’s the case, you’ll likely end up worse off than if you had done nothing because you invested time and capital into this change (to accomplish nothing). 

Make sure you take stock of your identity and strategy before deciding that a refresh is the best course of action.

If you determine you’re not dealing with a Brand problem, then you can move forward and refresh your packaging in confidence.

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Thanks for reading along.

In our next issue, we’ll explore some of the finer points and best practices for managing your package refresh.

***

1. This series is a Beer Branding Trends Newsletter exclusive. If there's someone on your team you think would benefit from reading along, please forward this email to them or have them sign up here so they receive everything.

2. Shoot me an email if you'd like to discuss refreshing your brewery's packaging.

***


Hi, there!

And welcome to the first issue of our 3-part series on package refreshes.

Today, we’re going to explore why so many breweries across the country are refreshing their packaging right now.

We’re going to deep dive into the nuances between rebrands, brand refreshes and package refreshes in our second issue in this series. But for a quick definition here, a package refresh is simply when you update your packaging on its own while leaving your core brand identity as is. So the end result would be new packaging adorned with your existing logo. 

But before getting into that, we need to understand the confluence of trends that are driving this shift in the first place.

Let’s get into that now. 

Why are breweries refreshing their packaging right now? 

Here’s our series thesis: 

There are more breweries today in the US than anytime in history, yet consumers are drinking less beer. This has led to flat-to-declining sales for breweries of all sizes across the country. The fallout? Marketing budgets are tighter than ever.

But this comes at a time when investing in your branding, packaging and marketing is more important due to all the aforementioned competition.

This means that breweries are carefully weighing their options and investing where they expect to see an outsized return. In this landscape, package refreshes have emerged as a compelling strategy to stay top of mind with consumers. 

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Let’s dig into this thesis a bit deeper now. 

1

Package refresh vs. a deeper rebrand: On weighing risk vs. reward 

The biggest issue driving a shift towards package refreshes is the challenging market we’re all facing.

A tough market necessitates being nimble no matter what, but in this context, a wholesale rebrand, complete with Brand Strategy, updating your brand identity, packaging (and the rest of your touch points: merch, website, way showing, sales materials and POS, etc.) and managing the complex process of launching the new look — represents a big investment (both in time and budget), that you might not be able to swing right now. 

To put it bluntly, rebranding is never without risk. And we're seeing people becoming more risk averse and more budget conscious due to the economic environment we’re in. 

Earlier this year, Allagash founder Rob Tod put it well when we he said that today’s beer market is a “game of inches.” Every dollar counts. Every barrel, every case, every account, all of it. 

And unless your brewery’s brand identity and positioning pose an immediate and existential threat to your business, it can be easier, faster and less risky to look for opportunities to drive incremental growth elsewhere.

So, a brand refresh that addresses annoying inconsistencies, or a package refresh that breathes new life into your on-shelf presence may be a better investment than burning everything to the ground and starting fresh 29 years in (even if that's what your heart really wants). 

TLDR: A package refresh can be help you find a quick win without as much risk.

Cost is subjective ( *a quick note )

I’ve mentioned a few times that package refreshes are more affordable than a formal rebrand.

I need to qualify that a refresh can be more affordable relative to a rebrand where you’re working through Brand Strategy (positioning and audience definition, brand voice, key communication pillars, Brand Essence and Architecture) and a Brand Identity update en route to refreshing your packaging. 

If — and this is a big IF that we’ll explore in issue 3 — your brand is on solid footing, then a package refresh can be a great investment that bypasses the additional cost (in budget and time) of a larger rebrand.

2

Your packaging is dusty (it hasn’t been updated since…)

There’s no hard and fast rule here, but if your packaging hasn’t been updated in 5+ years, it may be time to freshen everything up.

Why 5 years? Well… *gestures vaguely out the window* 

The last 5 years has presented a confluence of market changes, including a pandemic, channel shifting (home-premise vs. on-premise), shifting LDA demographics, consumers drinking across a variety of Bev Alc categories (to include NA options) and now, entrenched inflation. You’re also contending with increasingly blurred category lines (full of beyond beer / Fourth Category beverages), middle tier consolidation and (likely) significant changes to your competitive set.

And all of this happened hot on the heels of a period (the late 2010s) that saw as many as 3 breweries opening in the United State per day.

TLDR: A lot has changed over the last few years. And if your packaging, and along with it, your overall presentation and messaging, hasn’t evolved, you may be getting overlooked in the cold box.

A package refresh can be a tactical way to breathe new life into your off-premise presentation and give shoppers another reason to notice you.

3

You’ve gone through several in-house designers and/or agency partners and can clearly see the inconsistent label design style strata across your different brands

This is a common pain point for breweries that have been open for a while. If you’ve worked with multiple in-house designers, freelance partners or agencies, you're almost guaranteed to be able to see these various eras throughout your portfolio. 

You may have some illustration-heavy SKUs, and some minimal ones, and some that look more like Endorsed Brands than flagship beers…

Yeah, Kim designed those 2 cans, and Tom designed that one. That's when we tried to change our logo on our own…

This is exacerbated if each of these successive partners works in their own style vs. adhering to a dedicated set of Brand Guidelines.

No matter how it shakes out, a package refresh is a great opportunity to break everything down to the studs and start over. You can build on what's working, jettison the rest and bring everything in line so that it hangs together on shelf. This will help you rein in and systemize your packaging across the board. 

4

Your sales are flat (but not in a free fall)

Let’s throw 2020 out as an anomaly. From there, 2021 was a rebound year for almost everyone in the industry, with many of our clients posting one of their best years ever. Then 2022 was down. And 2023 was really down, or at least flat, for many. 

Breweries of all sizes are facing flat sales right now. So if you're in this boat, don't take it personally. As we outlined above, you're working against major headwinds that go far beyond your taproom walls. 

I wanted to include this point because most (but not all) of the refreshes we've handled in the last few years were done to reverse this trend and sell more beer after a generally flat period. 

If your sales are flat and not in free fall, let's call it hanging consistently at 10–20% down from your peak YOY for a few years in a row, then a refresh can be a good way of knocking some dust off and increasing sales. 

Check with your distributor and state brewers guild for more concrete benchmarking data to see where you stack up if need be.

If, however, you're seeing deeper declines, 30–50%+ down YOY for a few years, there may be a deeper issue at hand that a package refresh won't resolve.

This could point to any number of things, from a production quality issue (are you actually making great beer?), to a distribution and retail problem (are you actively gaining new placements? are you selling through?), to a branding and core positioning problem (do people know what you stand for? or that you exist? if you went out of business, would they even notice?), etc.

You have to decide where this line is. But our main takeaway is that a refresh can work great as long as you're not attempting to paper over a bigger problem. (We'll explore this idea in depth in our next few issues.)

But again, this isn’t the end of the world. You may just need to address some other issues before you get to your packaging revamp. 

(Above): Dogfish Head has been refreshing its packaging on a 4(ish) year clip for the last decade. This latest iteration brings their beer and RTD lines under a more cohesive look and feel by focusing one the "shark and shield" mark in a consistent spot. 

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5 

Things are going well (you’re winning new placements and sales are increasing YOY) and you want to invest in your brand while the sun’s shining

Enough doom and gloom. Let's get positive for a moment. 

We’ve handled a few packaging refreshes (though more often, these are more thorough brand refreshes) to capitalize on a period of growth and maintain momentum. 

So here, we're not working to right the ship and/or reverse a negative trend. Instead, we’re giving it some gas so you can keep building on your momentum and stack wins. 

NoDa and Fernson's refreshes are recent examples that illustrate this concept well. 

NoDa Brewing is a 13 year old Legacy Brewery in the hyper-competitive Charlotte, North Carolina market that needed to clarify messaging and bring more cohesion to their portfolio.

Fernson Brewing is 9 year old brewery in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We refreshed their packaging (after a period of growth) to allow for more Sub Brand development within their portfolio as they expand into other markets. 

The takeaway here is that in both cases, things were going well. Both outfits were growing YOY, and they invested in their packaging now while the getting is good. 

It's far easier to invest in your business — to pay down debt, handle planned maintenance, make a major CapEx investment in the brewhouse, hire killer talent, etc. — while everything is calm and quiet and the revenue is free flowing. 

It's far tougher to cut that check when your sales start to flatten.

If you're in a position to, you might consider making hay while the sun shines. 

(Above): Read more about how CODO helped revamp NoDa's packaging here.

—

 

6

You’ve rationalized your portfolio and want to clean everything up now that you have a clear set of priorities 

We’re seeing a lot of SKU rationalization amongst our larger brewery clients (30k+ bbl). And after a few years of this, you'll end up with a more streamlined product lineup.  

A package refresh can be a good way of officially re-introducing these brands to your distributor and broader market.

We usually see this driver run in tandem with these points as well: 

– You’re making some format changes to save costs on production (and possibly decrease turnaround time for new releases)—moving from a 16oz to a 12oz can, moving from bottles to cans, from painted cans to pressure sensitive labels, etc. 

– You're introducing a new flagship brand and want to bring everything up to snuff  

– You're revamping your ABP presentation and want to bring something to the table that gets your wholesale partners excited

7

Package Refresh as a stop gap: You’re planning on a deeper branding effort in the coming years, but still need to make a change now

We’ve seen a few cases lately where a brewery is considering a more thorough rebrand, but due to any number of reasons — budget constraints, production issues, an impending ownership shakeup, lack of capacity, bringing new locations online, navigating a crucial lease renewal — they still need might need to refresh their packaging now to address some immediate issues. 

This isn’t ideal, obviously, but it’s indicative of the market we're in today. The beer industry is shifting and it’s going to become increasingly difficult to launch a full scale rebrand like we used to back in the late 2010's. 

But you may still have to make a change right now, regardless.

If you’re in this position, revisit our thinking on Staggered Rebrand Launches to see how you can incrementally roll out your rebrand and turn this seemingly negative situation into a positive.

(Above): Here's a Lagunitas blog that outlines the first big change (the middle image, above). And here's a BrewBound article that details their new refresh (the bottom image, above), done just 16 months after the first look rolled out.

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8

You need to address an Intellectual Property (IP) issue 

We normally see IP issues stem more from corporate naming (or beer naming) conflicts than with package design and trade dress. But then, we've handled two package refreshes over the last year that were driven expressly by an IP issue. 

In one case, the brewery had previously refreshed their packaging (just a few years prior), only for it to end up looking too similar to a large competitor in their market (Oops). 

In the other case, the brewery was dealing with a lingering IP issue with a much larger competitor (think international conglomerate) that had finally decided to crack down on the situation after a few years of sending vague letters.

If you have an IP issue hanging over your head, consider whether or not a simple package refresh could be an effective way of addressing the problem (while also cleaning up some other inconsistencies and minor pain points along the way). 

Wrapping up

It's important to note that the drivers we've explored here rarely occur in isolation. More often, breweries face several of these challenges simultaneously, making a package refresh an attractive solution to address multiple issues at once.

A package refresh can be a great investment for breweries looking to make a change without the commitment of a more thorough rebrand.

If handled well, it allows you to update your shelf presence and increase sales while maintaining your core brand identity.

However, it's crucial to assess your situation carefully. While a refresh can solve many problems, this isn't a panacea.

We'll explore this idea — the differences between package refreshes, rebrands and brand refreshes (+ why the difference matters) — in our next issue.

—

PS: If you’ve recently refreshed your packaging, or are planning to, shoot me an email and let me know why. Was it something we covered here or another reason entirely?

There hasn’t been a single day since 2018 where CODO hasn’t been engaged in a brewery rebranding project. This includes wholesale rebrands, subtle brand refreshes and more prevalent as of late, package refreshes.  

Over the last 2 years alone, CODO has fielded more package refresh inquiries and projects, than anytime in our 15 year history.

We’re seeing this approach amongst our top 50 brewery clients (those producing ~75k+ bbl per year) down to outfits making ~1,000 bbl per year. And we’ve refreshed packaging for breweries as old as forty years and as young as two. 

So this trend runs the gamut—startup to Legacy. Micro to regional.

—

This has kept package refreshes top of mind around our shop for a while now.  

And since there’s a good chance your brewery might be considering a revamp some time soon, we figured now would be a good time to give you a run down on everything CODO has learned in our project work on this front: When you should (and shouldn’t) consider a package refresh, what are the pros and cons, nuances, nuts and bolts of this process, etc. 

But most importantly, how can you set your brewery up for success should you decide to refresh your packaging sometime soon? 

To explore this subject, we’ve built a special 3 part collection of Beer Branding Trends Newsletter issues creatively called: The Package Refresh Series. 

Here’s our series thesis: 

The American beer market is more competitive than ever.

+ 

Consumers are buying less beer than anytime in the modern era. 

+

Flat-to-declining sales combined with increased inputs across the board have lead to tighter marketing budgets and staffing (creative department head counts) across the industry.

+ 

Breweries have to carefully invest in their brand to stay relevant without breaking the bank. 

=

Refreshes, particularly package refreshes, are trending as a lower cost option (relative to full rebrands) as a way to stay top of mind with consumers. 

And if handled well, these moves can often net a great return with less risk.

—

We'll explore this idea in the following issues (and companion podcasts) over the coming weeks:

Issue 1: Why are so many breweries refreshing their packaging right now? ( Sept. 17 )

Issue 2: Package refreshes vs. brand refreshes (vs. rebrands) ( Oct. 1 )

Issue 3: How to successfully refresh your brewery’s packaging ( Oct. 15 ) 

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This series is a BBT exclusive, so if there’s someone on your team — another designer, a co-founder, a marketing director, a brewer or investor — you think would benefit from reading along, please forward this email to them or have them sign up here so they receive everything in real time.

Thanks for reading along. (I’m glad you’re here.)

We’ll be back in your inbox on September 17 to kick this all off.

Morning. 

This week (August 15, to be exact) marks the 2 year publishing anniversary of CODO’s latest book, The Beyond Beer Handbook.

As a refresher, this book captures everything Cody and I learned from 2.5 years of client work and research into Brand Architecture. Part book, part quiz, and part choose-your-own-adventure-style novel, this is a purpose-built tool for helping you expand your brewery’s portfolio and build a more resilient business.

Here are some fun metrics:

– We’ve sold ~500 copies. These aren't NYT best seller numbers, but I’m confident this is the best selling book on beer and beverage Brand Architecture in the world. It helps that this is the only beer and beverage Brand Architecture book in the world.

– Our Beverage Extension Assessment Tool (B.E.A.T.) has been downloaded 4,300+ times.

– The BBH site itself has welcomed more than 42,000 unique visitors. (This sounds impressive until you revisit that sales figure.)

– And Cody and I have traveled all over the country to speak about Brand Architecture at 7 brewers conferences, culminating with a presentation at CBC this past April in Las Vegas.

—

These numbers are fun to share, but that’s not my aim here. Instead, I want to talk about what we got wrong in The Beyond Beer Handbook (BBH). Or at least, what we’ve learned in the 2 years since publishing BBH.

Here are a handful of things I wish we’d known and/or done differently back when we were writing this book back in 2021.

1

We should have expanded the book’s scope

When we wrote The Beyond Beer Handbook, CODO had spent 2.5 years helping breweries launch beyond beer / fourth category beverages (seltzers, RTDs, distilleries, coffees, etc.). We handled this work every single day over that period. 

So this was the lens through which we wrote The Beyond Beer Handbook: How can your brewery launch a new XYZ? 

It was very product based.

If I had it to do over again, I would change the book’s title and slightly shift the focus to be less about launching a specific product, and be more about how you can use Brand Architecture to work through a variety of more challenging business decisions. 

We still help breweries position, brand and launch new products today. But more often than not, we’re hired to solve deeper problems than how to position a new beyond beer brand.

Here are a handful of problems we’ve helped clients navigate over the last year:

– Our brewery just purchased another brewery. We want to keep a few of their core brands, but aren’t sure how to (or how not to) position these within our portfolio.

– We just acquired another brewery primarily for their taproom. Should we keep their brand in place and run this as a bar, or bring it under our brewery’s brand, or rebrand it entirely, or…? 

– We’ve built a healthy portfolio of brands (House of Brands). When should our corporate brand be publicly-visible? When does this become necessary and/or advantageous?

– We want to launch a light beer brand, but aren’t sure if it makes sense to tie it to our brewery’s parent brand. 

– We’re getting into the cannabis industry and aren’t sure how much separation we should put between our parent brand and this new line.

– Our Legacy Brewery has always had a monolithic Branded House model (e.g. XYZ Brewing Pale Ale, XYZ Brewing Pilsner). We’re considering introducing fanciful names as a first step toward building a few Sub Brands but still aren’t sure if this is the right move. 

– Our best selling Hazy IPA is an insane growth engine. We’ve got a few ideas for Line Extensions but are terrified that we’ll kill our golden goose. How can we safely extend this brand?

– We’ve been approached by someone who wants to invest in one of our core brands. We’re open to this idea but aren’t sure how to approach this from a branding perspective.

—
 

I could keep going here, but you get my point. 

Brand Architecture is a framework for growing your business, and I think our laser focus on using it as a tool for launching fourth category products in BBH sells its value short. 

(Above): Our work with Fernson Brewing is a good example of a brewery shifting away from a Monolithic Brand House and embracing Sub Brands. 

—
 

2

We should have spent more time explaining how your brewery can (and should) develop a Brand Architecture Map 

A Brand Architecture Map is a 30k foot view of all the brands, products and services your brewery offers. 

This can help you intuitively group specific products into lines, retire or shift other brands, and identify new extension target category opportunities. It also helps you call out how specific brands should look and feel, how they’re merchandised, how they're positioned and how they rise above category canon.

We didn't spend enough time on this in BBH, and I can’t for the life of me understand how this happened. 

(Let’s just blame Cody on this one.)

3

Brand Architecture is an invaluable tool for future proofing your portfolio 

Another compelling reason to build a Brand Architecture Map is that it can guide your new product development (NPD) and innovation pipeline over the coming years. 

We first heard this idea when rebranding Good George Brewing out of New Zealand. 

Now, this isn’t revelatory — this is how Brand Architecture has been used for years in CPG branding. But CODO is seeing more dedicated engagements where we’re helping breweries get a lay of the land as far as their current portfolio sits as a means of mapping out other segments and categories a brewery can explore. Or to our bullet list from above, how you can roll a potential acquisition into the fold, how you can spin out and scale a Sub Brand, where it could make sense to co-brand, or line extend, etc. 

This shrinks the timeline it takes to go from initial idea to product launch because you’ve already done the leg work on which categories make sense to explore and how your brewery might release (name, brand and position) a new product in that segment, should you decide to do so. 

This idea wasn’t an oversight from when we wrote BBH. It was just something we hadn’t run into in our project work up to that point. 

(Above): We developed a comprehensive Brand Architecture Map for New Zealand's Good George Brewing specifically to help map out their future NPD work. Read more about this rebrand here.

—
 

4

Sub / Endorsed Brands are a clutch tool for safely expanding your brewery’s brand 

An important part of our thesis in BBH was that literature on Brand Architecture tends to fall into one of two camps. 

The first camp presents Brand Architecture as a simple binary decision (e.g. you’re either a Branded House or a House of Brands. Done. Go to market!). 

The second camp is geared more toward multinational conglomerate portfolio strategy (e.g. how should Unilever release a new shampoo that won’t compete with its 12 other shampoo brands?). This is the type of overly-complicated stuff that gets MBAs excited — verticals, creating divisions, determining diversified vs. focused-value propositions, intrinsic vs. extrinsic benefits, co-drivers, token endorsements, shadow drivers (oooh, mysterious), varying levels of brand equity and so forth. It is cumbersome and overly-complicated. 

But between these two poles — overly-simple, and overly-complex — lies a nuanced set of strategies you can use to launch any new brand.  

Sub / Endorsed Brands, in particular, have a lot of utility in CPG brand building, and this is why you’re seeing so much of this in beer branding and portfolio moves today. 

The thing we left out of BBH was how to actually build a Sub Brand. (Here again, this wasn’t so much an omission as it was Cody and I not having enough experience on this front in those early days.)

We remedied this by putting out our Sub Brand Summer series last year. This series introduced our “Sub Brand Ladder” concept which outlines how can your brewery go from initial idea to building a platform and scaling a Sub Brand to the point where it becomes its own living breathing brand, entirely separate from your parent brand.

Here are those links in case you want a refresher:

– Part 1: Sub Brands: So hot right now  +  Podcast

– Part 2: Sub Brands vs. Endorsed Brands  +  Podcast 

– Part 3: How to scale the Sub Brand Ladder  +  Podcast 

We’re wrapping up several great projects on this front and plan to share case studies over the coming year, so stay tuned for more on this topic if you’re interested. 

5 

We didn’t spend enough time on the House of Brands / Hybrid Brand models 

When we wrote BBH, we mostly saw the House of Brands model used amongst larger beer and Bev Alc groups. e.g. ABI, Boston Beer Company, Artisanal Brewing Ventures, Diageo, etc.

This dynamic changed almost overnight as we began seeing our smaller brewery clients create joint ventures (JVs), acquire other breweries and brands, spin out and grow Sub Brands, launch new standalone brands and in many cases, become (accidental) Hospitality Groups. 

So a House of Brands architecture is not limited to huge (100M+ revenue) concerns only. 

And building on this, we first introduced the Hybrid Brand concept (which is every bit as nuanced as a Brand Extension, Endorsed Brand, or any other Brand Architecture tool) at the end of BBH. It’s actually in the concluding chapter.

As a refresher, a Hybrid Brand model is basically the acknowledgement that over time, your brewery will naturally end up using a variety of Brand Architecture models in concert. So there’s no clean one-and-done system here.

And to introduce this concept in the last few pages of the book and then walk away was shortsighted. (Again, I blame Cody.)

Like a lot of the things we’ve discussed here, this concept is more relevant to breweries today than it was when we published BBH, and we're just now learning this.

Over the coming years, I see almost every brewery in the country employing a Hybrid Brand Architecture model as their business organically ebbs and flows into beer and beyond.

We’ll put out more content on this idea, including a fun case study, early next year. 

(Above): We helped Virginia Beer Co. build the Cold Drinking Beer brand specifically to travel to further afield markets where their parent brand might not have as much traction.

Read about this entire process here.

—


Wrapping up

There are several other small things we’ve learned over the last few years of project work, but this list captures all the big ticket items. 

And I suspect that I could write another issue like this 2 years from today. Or, if we sell a few hundred more books (here's your code!), maybe we'll put out an expanded second edition. 

Either way, Brand Architecture is a fascinating subject, and I believe any brewery who’s aspiring to grow their business should read up on it.

For some actionable takeaways, here are a few things your team could think about as we head into the end of the year. 

1. Read BBH. I know we just spent an entire issue telling you about what we got wrong or omitted from the book, but it is still a perfect foundational read on Brand Architecture.

2. Create a Brand Architecture map for your brewery and revisit it annually. This will help you understand where your brand(s) sit today as well as other categories you could explore in the coming years.

3. The 7th person to email me with the subject line “Doppelbock” wins a free copy of The Beyond Beer Handbook.

4. I want you to continually fight for, and defend, your parent brand. It’s fun to launch new products, and locations and extensions to grow your business. But it’s also easy to dilute and undermine your core positioning if you’re not careful. 

Read up on Brand Architecture and grow your brand, but make sure you’re protecting your parent brand along the way. 

Morning! 

Quick admin note before we get started: I’m experimenting today by including dozens of links in this issue. 

This is *technically* too many links for a newsletter. Or at least it runs afoul of every email best practice there is. 

But I want to give you a comprehensive look at how to think about, and plan for, your rebrand in case that’s on the horizon. So I’m pulling in several relevant blogs, podcasts and book chapters to give you a deeper context on these issues where appropriate.

Please shoot me an email after reading and let me know what you think:

I love it. More links!

Ew, no. Rein it in champ. 

Alright, let’s get to it. 


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Rebranding can be one of the most valuable steps your brewery ever takes. 

If done well, it can breathe new life into your brand, drive an increase in sales and position your brewery for success over the coming years. 

But this process is not without risk. 

If bungled, you can actually see a decline in sales. You can lose important on and off-premise placements. You can alienate long time fans and fail to recruit new drinkers at the same time.

Oh, and you’re spending many tens of thousands of dollars to do all of this. 

(No pressure.)

These risks notwithstanding, we’re helping breweries of all sizes, and ages, across the country (and up in Canada) rebrand right now. So no matter how risky this process can be, the deeper issues driving these moves remain in place.  

CODO has rebranded more than 40 breweries to date, and we’ve developed a repeatable, proven process to help manage this entire process, stem to stern. 

And a big part of this process is laying the important ground work to ensure our clients have a chance to be successful in the first place.

So today, I’d like to walk through a few ways we do this and explore how you can de-risk your rebrand if you’ve got one on deck sometime soon.

(Above): Craft Beer, Rebranded and its companion workbook are a step-by-step guide to map out a winning strategy ahead of your brewery's rebrand.

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1. 

You need to clearly define what problems & opportunities you’re addressing

Before embarking on a rebrand, it’s important to first examine why you’re wanting to make a change in the first place. 

What pain points are you dealing with that make you think this is the right move? 

What market forces, competitive set changes, and internal shifts make you think that investing in a revamp right now is the best use of your time, energy and capital? 

And on the flip side, what exciting opportunities do you see that a revamp could help you achieve?

Rebranding will always address a variety of pain points, but our project work more often than not revolves around building on and maintaining momentum as much as it does addressing some existential problem.

No matter where you land here, you need to understand what issue(s) you’re addressing so you know the proper next step.

Read more about our Evolution vs. Revolution heuristic to get a quick lay of the land on this idea.

> On Brewery Rebrands: Evolution vs. Revolution [ Podcast ]

> Equally important here is when not to rebrand. [ from Craft Beer, Rebranded ]

(Above): KettleHouse Brewing's rebrand had a clear objective: Carefully evolve their existing identity and set them up for regular releases over the coming years that add to the overall look vs. veering off course.

Read more about this rebrand here.

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2. 

Do you need a full rebrand, or could a lighter touch brand and/or package refresh accomplish your goals?

A full rebrand can be expensive and takes time to execute properly. But you might not need to rip everything down to the studs here.

If your Brand Strategy calls for it, a more subtle identity and/or package refresh might get you a great return on your investment (minus some of the risk associated with a larger shift). 

Caveat here: Don’t let the tail wag the dog.

You should try to not let budget dictate how you address your problems IF possible. I know every dollar counts right now, but if you actually do need to dramatically change things up for whatever reason, then some sort of refresh, no matter how little you spend on it, likely won’t fix the core problem you need to address in the first place.

We’ve written about package and brand refreshes before. Here are a few links if you'd like to read more on this topic:

> Rebrands vs. Refresh: What’s the difference? [ BBT Issue ]

> When should you refresh your packaging? [ BBT Issue ]

(Above): Fernson Brewing's package refresh is a great example of how a laser-focused update (vs. a broader rebrand) can move the needle. 

Read more about this project here and listen to a podcast conversation with Fernson for even more context here. 

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3. 

Identify and involve the the correct stakeholders

Writing this newsletter gives us interesting insight into what people like to read: How does a particular headline affect open rates, which sort of content spurs the most click throughs and/or responses, etc. 

I say this to say that whenever we send out a wonky, more process-focused BBT issue on something like organizing your key stakeholders ahead of a rebrand, it performs an order of magnitude worse than, say, a sexy rebranding case study. 

We’re talking a ~70% average open rate dropping down to ~50%. (Or lower!)

And look, I get it. 

Do you want to read about how to properly interview an investor so they won’t come back and ruin your project two months later because they feel like they weren’t included enough along the way? Oooooor, would you rather watch us sock a few dingers look at a bunch of flashy icons and packaging concepts?

But if you’re planning to rebrand, I maintain that organizing your key stakeholders ahead of time is every bit as mission critical as properly defining your Brand Strategy and making all that killer(!!!) graphic design work.

Why?

Because all of our (and your) hard work — framing your Brand Strategy, building your Modular Brand Identity System development, your packaging and website, whatever it is we’re making — stands a good chance of not making it out into the wild if your internal stakeholders aren’t properly managed.

The project will either go south and not be completed. Or perhaps worse, whatever ends up getting shipped will be watered down and probably won’t help you move the needle anyway.  

I could go on and on here about how important it is to tag in your retailers and distributors, how to engage your fans in this process, how to identify and manage hidden stakeholders and on the importance of fighting off even the slightest hint of a committee being involved in this process. 

But I’ll stop here. Hit this link for further reading on this:

> Organizing your internal rebranding project team [ BBT Issue ]

(Above): Mission Brewing's brand refresh leaned heavily into their visual equity. Read the original case study here.

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4. 

It’s Brand Strategy all the way down 

I just outlined how managing all of your key stakeholders is key to a successful outcome. The other half of this equation is properly defining your Brand Strategy. 

Your Brand Strategy includes all the recurring stuff we talk about here on BBT, things like defining:

– Your positioning and key differentiators 
– Your brand voice and personality 
– Your key messaging pillars
– Your brand story 
– Your Brand Essence
– Your strategic objectives (how you will achieve, and maintain, long term differentiation in the marketplace)

+

– How all of this looks and feels via Mood Boards. How you take these ideas into the real world via your brand identity and package design.

This work is important because it gets everyone together to work through challenging issues and make important decisions long before you ever put pencil to paper to work on a logo or can design.

This upstream strategy work drives all of the downstream design decisions. This ensures that all that whiz bang graphic design (that everyone likes looking at so. much. more. than the wonky stuff) is strategically sound and helps you accomplish your goals.

(Above): Brand Strategy work for Good George Brewing's rebrand. Read more about this New Zealand brewery here. 

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5. 

Conduct a Brand Audit to define your visual and Brand Equity 

A brand audit is a rigorous examination of all of your brewery’s internal and external communications going back to your earliest days. This includes any existing positioning and brand strategy documents, your brand identity system (and guidelines), package design, POS and other sales assets, merch, digital (website, social media, email), key events and festivals, and on and on.

You do this to determine what visual and Brand Equity you’ve developed as well as which elements are important to retain and build on moving forward.

This work actually happens during your Brand Strategy phase (at least it does in CODO's process), but no matter when you tackle it, this will be an important part of figuring out how you revamp your brewery’s brand. 

Here are a few more links to learn more about Brand Equity:

> What is Brand Equity, really? [ BBT Issue ]

> Defining your Brand Equity: Fast & Slow [ BBT Issue ]

> When to jettison your Brand Equity [ BBT Issue ]

(Above): One of our project goals for Left Field Brewery's refresh was to update their brand identity and packaging so subtly that their fans might not even notice the change.

Read more about this project here.

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6. 

Knock your new work out of the park 

This point sounds obvious, but a great way of de-risking your rebrand is to just crush the graphic design portion of the project. A cool logo update and beautiful packaging will get you noticed in retail and knock off any rough edges from your refresh itself (e.g. the inevitable small group of people who will grumble about any change.)

If we can look at Anchor's catastrophic rebrand as an example, I believe that Anchor’s biggest crime during this process wasn’t throwing away its gorgeous visual equity (though, that’s pretty damn bad), but that they replaced it with abysmally-designed packaging.

To be clear, throwing away all their visual equity was a mistake. Full stop. But if they had replaced it with something that was at least *attractive* (a low bar here), I don't think the push back would've been as extreme.  

Contrast this with Fat Tire’s latest revamp. They threw all equity out the window, but at least the design is lovely. That does’t guarantee this iteration will actually right the ship and help the brand's sagging sales come back, but it isn’t as offensive.

My point is that if you’re revamping your branding and packaging, you have to absolutely crush this work.

It has to be gorgeous and compelling. It has to stand out from your completive set. It has to work across a variety of channels. And if the strategy prescription calls for it, it should honor where you’ve come from while also signaling where your brewery is headed. 

But above all, it needs to be beautiful.

(Above, Top): Anchor Brewing's abysmal rebrand. Read our original thoughts on this (all the way back in issue 2 of BBT) here.

(Above, Bottom): Prost Brewing's rebrand is one of the best case studies in the industry for how a rebrand can drive an increase in sales and growth, even during a down market. Read the original case study here.


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7. 

Consider a staggered rebrand launch 

Let’s look way ahead now to when you wrap up and launch your rebrand.

Think about how you’re going to announce this change to the world. How (and when) are you going to let your entire staff and internal B2B stakeholders (retailers and wholesalers) know about the change? 

And when (and how) are you going to tell your fans? How can we use this roll out to celebrate this change and brig your customers along for the ride?

Enter the Staggered Rebrand Launch.

This has become CODO’s de facto recommendation for how breweries should roll out their revamp. 

But back to today’s thesis, a staggered rollout is a great way to de-risk your rebrand because you can put stuff out in the market incrementally, warm people up to the look and control your output (e.g. COGs associated with full implementing your new look all at once).

Here’s how we’ve traditionally handled rollouts. Note, most of this is evergreen, but the ability to turn everything live—launch your new packaging throughout your market, launch your new website, sell shiny new merch—at the same time was more doable before the wild disruptions the industry has experiences since 2020.

So even if you want to switch everything live from one day to the next, a staggered rollout might be a bette routine anyway. 


—


Wrapping up 

I try not to make these newsletters CODO commercials, but I feel compelled to do so in this instance. 

If your brewery is considering some sort of revamp sometime soon, be that a brand or package refresh, or a wholesale rebrand, please drop me a line to discuss how CODO can help you manage this process.

This is what we do day in and day out. 

And it’s a fun, rewarding process.  

Morning! 

We’ve been writing about Sub / Endorsed Brands, and Brand Architecture, heavily for the last few years.

And this is showing no sign of slowing down—both the continued march of Sub Brands as an important Brand Strategy move in today’s maturing beer market, aaaaaand me writing about it. (Sorry.)

Today, I wanted to share a few interesting Sub Brand use case we’ve come across in our project work in the last 6 to 12 months. 

These are all interesting scenarios that you might find valuable as you think about your portfolio for the remainder of 2024. 

But first, a quick definition here, from The Beyond Beer Handbook:

What is a Sub Brand?

A Sub Brand is connected closely to your parent brand—think of it as a little extra spice given to separate each product from one another within your overall portfolio. A Sub Brand still carries the same values that intuitively link it to the parent brand, but targets a specific audience with further defined attributes and benefits that might not be offered by the parent brand alone. This allows you to build stronger bonds with your existing customers while expanding your overall footprint by dipping your toes into new categories and audiences.

—

A few important nuances here:

1. In Brand Architecture terms, this strategy can manifest as a Sub Brand or an Endorsed Brand. The specific approach isn’t as important as is the long term bet that we’re seeing more breweries make: The future will be more centered around specific brands and brand families, more so than around a brewery’s parent brand.

2. When building a true Sub Brand, your parent brand is still the main purchasing driver.

So the things we’re discussing today can be positioned as Sub or Endorsed Brands. The main takeaway is that you’re building a brand within your brewery's broader portfolio.

(Above): Revisit our Sub Brand Summer series here.

—
 

Sub Brand use case #1: Bridging into the fourth category 

Our Brand Architecture work began in earnest in 2019 when we helped a handful of breweries across the country launch hard seltzer brands. That work quickly gave way to breweries building RTD cocktail lines, spirit brands, coffee brands, Hop Waters, NA beer and all manner of other fourth category products. 

The biggest concern in these early engagements was what releasing this new non-beer product would say about your brewery. (i.e. will this confuse our fans?)

Building a Sub Brand to launch a fourth category product is a clean path to market because it puts just enough of a buffer between your parent brand and this new product brands so that you can continue to expand this new line (via Line Extensions, co-branding, scaling the Sub Brand Ladder, etc.) without harming your parent brand’s positioning and equity.

This creates a solid platform for future extensions should you decide to go that route.

(Above): Left Field Brewery has created a series of Sub / Endorsed Brands to bridge into the Fourth Category.

—
 

Sub Brand use case #2: Building a premium product line 

A Sub Brand can be a great way to differentiate a specific beer, or line of beers from the rest of your portfolio. 

And depending on your strategy, a brand name and unique identity can help elevate the presentation and drive a higher price. 

This is a classic strategy in beer and CPG branding and you’ve probably done some variation of it before yourself. Common examples include barrel aged program (big stouts, foeder series, wild ales, etc.).

But the category, beer or beyond, isn't important to this point. Our main takeaway is that we're seeing an overall uptick in this sort of project work right now.

So think through whether there's an opportunity to create a premium line within your brewery's portfolio. 

(Above): Read more about Rhinegeist's premium barrel-aged line here.

—

 

Sub Brand use case #3: Building a budget line 

On the other end of this spectrum, we’re seeing a lot of Sub Brand development around budget-ish lines. 

This is being driven almost entirely by the craft lager and light beer trend. These aren’t quite domestic, in terms of pricing, but seek to occupy that same space in people’s fridge. And I think the “budget” term here is relative.

These premium lagers are “budget” relative to the rest of your craft portfolio, but more premium than the mainline domestic industrial lager brands.

We’ve written a lot about this space over the last year. If you’re interested in this topic, hit these links to learn more: 

> The year of craft lager?

> On the perils of releasing a budget brand

Sub Brand use case #4: Creating a brand that can travel

The last several years have seen breweries pulling back from further afield markets and re-entrenching in their backyard. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still find growth across state lines.

And we’re working on a lot of projects right now that aim to do just this: Not take over the world via national expansion, but push into a market just down the road where you feel like you can win. 

The problem is that there is so much beer—great beer—everywhere, that the value prop for buying your brewery's beer in another market is challenging. 

This is a problem for all craft breweries looking to launch new markets, but becomes amplified the more closely tied you are to your town or state. 

A targeted Sub Brand, particularly a lifestyle play that eschews specific provenance is a great way to get around this. It allows you to drop into a market and build without your parent brand’s baggage.

Our recent work building the Cold Drinking Beer brand is a great example of this concept.

Virginia Beer Co. sells a lot of beer in their home state. But this name doesn't carry much weight in, say, South Carolina. It can actually work against you. 

The Virginia Beer Co. still wanted to expand their distribution footprint, so they created a light beer brand—Cold Drinking Beer—to lead the charge.

Read more about how we built the Cold Drinking Beer brand here.

Wrapping up

We (CODO) see Sub Brands and Brand Architecture moves as one of the most important things happening in beer right now. At least from our corner of the industry as a branding firm. 

Breweries across the country are finding, and winning, incremental growth by making these sorts of moves. 

And whether you go premium or budget, beer or beyond, you should think about how these strategies could help bolster your business in the coming years. 

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Drop me a line if you want to explore how your brewery could build a Sub Brand.

Morning. 

Over the past year, we’ve rebranded breweries as young as 3 years old and groups that are more than 40 years old. 

And we’ve fielded more inquiries for breweries looking to rebrand than we could actually take on. So, anecdotally, it seems like this topic is top of mind at breweries across the country right now. 

This work has spanned subtle brand refreshes, sweeping rebrands and tactical package refreshes that land somewhere in the middle.

We covered some of the issues driving these moves in our 2024 Beer Branding Trends review. 

Today, I want to dive even deeper and explore a handful of more acute issues, pain points and goals we’re seeing in our project work across the country right now.

If any of this resonates with you, shoot me an email and let’s explore how CODO can help you address them at your brewery.

Let’s get into it.  

(Above): Give Craft Beer, Rebranded a read if you're considering a revamp.

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1. Sales are flat

We’re handling a lot of rebrands today to directly combat flat (to declining) sales. 

“We’ve been hovering right at 8,500 bbl for the last few years.” 

Or…

“We’re coming back from our 2019 high point of 12,000 bbl but are stuck in a stubborn plateau.”

Another shift we’ve seen is less of an emphasis on branding as a way to make you look cool (so a surface level consideration), and more direct conversations about how this effort should increase sales: So branding as a strategic move—a precursor—to gaining back your lost share. 

I don’t have anything deeper to say here other than I’m glad that people are talking openly about the value of branding and how they expect to see a clear return on their investment. 

(Above): A snapshot of the ROI Prost Brewing saw post rebrand in 2019. They're continuing to grow YOY to this day. 

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2. Things are going well and you want to capitalize on that momentum 

I’m including this point as a positive counter to the previous one.

Not all of our rebranding work today is aimed at combating slacking sales. We’re actually helping a lot of folks for whom things are going well. Really, really well. 

Sales are trending up, their team is fired up and they’re on a winning streak.

These groups see a revamp as a way to knock off some rough corners and keep the good times rolling.

These sorts of engagements are generally more of a refresh than an outright rebrand (learn about the difference here). 

And as such, they usually aim to address annoying pain points (think inconsistent packaging, a shallow identity system that doesn’t lend itself to merchandising, etc.), more than deep, existential who-am-I?-type issues. 

What’s working? How can we build on that and continue to stay ahead of everyone else? 

(Above): NoDa Brewing was is a great spot when they reached out to discuss a rebrand in 2022. Most of our process centered around refining what was working and jettisoning what wasn't so they could present a clearer story out in retail.

Read more about this project here and listen to a podcast for more behind the scenes project context here. (Also, you love to see it.)

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3. “It’s just time”

"It’s just time. We haven’t updated our packaging in several years and customers just aren’t seeing them on shelf."

We’ve heard this idea from breweries, distributors and retailers across the country on several revamps this year. 

In the past (say, pre-2020), I would hear something like this and take it with a grain of salt. I used to believe that you should aim to have consistent packaging for years so people know what to look for on shelf—so that your packaging becomes iconic in your market.  

But I’ve come around almost entirely to the “it’s just time” argument. 

I now think there’s a lot of merit to refreshing your packaging every 3 or 4 (ish) years just to keep things, well, fresh.

We’re gathering sales data on a few engagements to support this idea (stay tuned for case studies that illustrate this), but for now, I can say that it’s looking like a killer rebrand done once—perfectly executed across the board—followed by package refreshes in 3 to 4 (ish) year intervals seems to be a great way to get a lot of return on your investment. 

So yeah, sometimes it can just be time to knock some dust off and revamp your branding. 

 

4. Rebranding ahead of an important Brand Architecture move

We've run into this several times over the last few years.

Your brewery will want to make some sort of Brand Architecture move, and while planning, realize that you need to readdress your core positioning and brand identity itself first (or alongside that work).

A few examples we've seen include:

– You want to spin a best selling brand into a Sub Brand (Scaling the Sub Brand Ladder).

 – You bought another brewery (or distillery, restaurant, brand, etc.) and now have to figure out how these brands live together.

– You need to bring all of your taproom and/or restaurant locations under a more cohesive brand experience, but found your branding, as is, isn't suited for this. 

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Rebranding, and working through your Brand Strategy, is a great time to take stock of everything you've got going on and prioritize. 

What's working well? What could work better if we make XYZ changes? And what should we lose entirely from a Brand Architecture standpoint?

(Above): Fernson Brewing shifted away from a monolithic Branded House and leaned into building unique Sub Brands for each of their core beers. This allows them to tailor marketing and sales programming to each specific SKU and do some fun world building around each brand.

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5. Cleaning up a poorly performing previous rebrand 

This one’s interesting and we’re seeing it more often today. 

It looks something like this: Your brewery rebranded a while back (say, back in 2017), but the work wasn’t really that good. Or more importantly, it didn’t have the impact you were hoping for. (And that doesn’t even count what the wrecking ball that is 2020–2024 did to your brand and the industry as a whole).

We’ve handled a few of these engagements now and I can confidently say that a poorly managed rebrand may actually be worse than doing nothing at all because: 

– Again, the work can just be bad  🙁

– There’s (usually) no deeper strategy, messaging and positioning work upon which to scaffold everything else

– You likely didn’t clearly define, let alone address your pain points the first time around (so now you’re just stacking on more problems). We see a lot of surface level refreshes that were billed as rebrands, so they didn't actually discuss important underlying issues like positioning, brand voice and portfolio architecture.

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A word of caution here: Make sure you get it right this time. 

Rebranding multiple times over the course of a several years is a bad sign. And at the risk of sounding too melodramatic, it’s now do or die. 

We’ve heard from distributors and retailers (on two specific projects now), that it seems like your brewery A) doesn’t know what it’s doing and because of that, is… B) throwing a bunch of shit against the wall to see what sticks.

Not great either way. 

And for your customers, who have (essentially) unlimited options for what beer to buy, why would they stick around for your 3rd revamp? 

Oh, they rebranded again? I guess things aren’t going so hot?

A rebrand is a signal. If handed well, it can be a powerful one.

(Above): Multiple rebrands over a short period aren't a good look. Lagunitas' rebrand (top left) was out in the market for less than two years before they rolled out *another* revamp (top right).

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Why are so many breweries rebranding today? 

Because the boom is over. The days of easy, organic growth are long gone and in order to thrive over the next ten years, you need to get your branding—your story and key messaging, your brand voice and identity and packaging—completely dialed in.

This is no longer a nice-to-have. And it’s not even table stakes. Now, it’s mission critical. 

Your competition is already thinking along these lines and I want you to do the same. 

Shoot me an email if you’d like to discuss your brewery’s branding and how you could improve it.

Morning! 

Today, I want to discuss the (many) risks, and (few) upsides, of accidentally repositioning your parent brand when releasing an extension.

We've previously covered the possibility of negatively affecting what your brand stands for in people's minds when releasing a budget beer.

And while — spoiler alert — most of the points we’ll explore today are negative, there are a few use cases where an extension can positively reposition your parent brand as well.

To be clear, this risk is present anytime you're extending your brand, whether through a simple Line Extension, Brand Extension, or with some sort of Sub / Endorsed Brand. 

Our goal is to make sure that any shift that happens is not accidental and works to your advantage. 

Let’s get into it. 

What does it mean to reposition your parent brand? 

One of our through lines in The Beyond Beer Handbook was that your brewery can (and probably should) launch new extensions and brands, but not at the expense of your parent brand. 

There’s more that goes into this definition, but for today’s conversation, let’s just say that your positioning is where you sit in people’s minds, relative to your competition.

Read more on positioning here.

You want to set any new release up for as much success as possible while still protecting what your parent brand stands for in people’s minds. 

Repositioning your parent brand is simply that: It is to change what you fundamentally mean to someone by introducing a new thing for them to associate with your parent brand.

A new product, a new category, a new value prop, a new brand voice, a new identity, and so on.

If you don’t carefully weigh what a new extension says about your brewery, your parent brand can lose focus, meaning and value overtime. 

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It’s easy to understand why inadvertently repositioning your parent brand is harmful, but let’s explore these ideas to drive this home.

A misaligned extension can confuse, and alienate, your customers 

If a new product runs counter to what you’ve traditionally stood for, consumers may struggle to connect the new offering with the parent brand they are familiar with.

This can lead to a disconnect in messaging and communication, causing consumers to question the authenticity and relevance of the extension.

Customers who have been loyal to your parent brand may feel alienated if they perceive that the repositioning is a departure from the values and qualities they associate with your brand.

They might feel that the brand no longer resonates with their preferences, which could prompt them to seek alternatives.

Losing loyal customers can be detrimental to the overall success (to put it mildly) of both the parent brand and the extension.

(Above): Is Bud Light a beer brand, or a hard soda / seltzer / lemonade / tiki cocktail / cider brand? 

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A misaligned extension can wipe out precious Brand Equity / dilute what you stand for 

Your parent brand will establish a specific identity and reputation in consumers’ minds over time. Repositioning the parent brand to accommodate a brand extension can dilute the equity that you’ve worked hard to build, potentially confusing customers about what the brand truly stands for. 

This can erode the trust and loyalty that existing customers have developed, leading to decreased sales and tarnished brand perception.
 

A misaligned extension can cannibalize sales 

Repositioning a parent brand to align with a brand extension might inadvertently lead to market overlap and cannibalization. If an extension targets a similar segment or is too similar to an existing offering, you may urge people (consumers and retailers) to buy the new product in place of your parent brand.

(Above): Bud Light next competes directly with Bud Light. Not to mention Bud Light Seltzer and Michelob Ultra as well as any other low cal / carb Bev Alc offering in AB InBev's portfolio.

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We’ve spent a good deal of time talking about how you can negatively impact your positioning with a new extension. Now let’s look at how an extension can positively reposition your parent brand.

Consider the halo effect & how this can benefit your parent brand 

One way an extension can reposition your parent brand is by coming out of the gate red hot and appealing to a much broader demographic than you've traditionally reached.  

We see this a lot amongst Legacy Breweries. 

Cody and I were presenting at a conference recently and someone asked us why New Belgium has kept its name on all Voodoo Ranger products, given how big the brand has become. 

It's a great example here, so let's dig into it. 

Take a look at Voodoo Ranger packaging below and you’ll see a small New Belgium endorsement. 

As the audience member was suggesting, I don't see this Endorsement helping Voodoo Ranger (i.e. people buying Voodoo Ranger because they see that it's a New Belgium product). 

I'd go as far as to say that, functionally, this Endorsement brings nothing to the table at this point in terms of nudging people to give the beer a try. Instead, this serves to invite Voodoo Ranger drinkers to look into other New Belgium products.

So it's capturing all the good will and velocity Voodoo Ranger has earned and positively affects the New Belgium parent brand.

—

This is a good case study for Legacy Breweries. 

If done right (the right style, positioning and marketing), an Endorsed extension can make an older brand seem relevant and cool again and shift what your parent brand stands for in people's minds. 

(Above): Note the subtle New Belgium endorsement on all Voodoo Ranger products.

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On mitigating risk: Wrapping up with some Brand Architecture options

There’s always a risk of repositioning your parent brand, or harming your overall reputation in some way when releasing an extension.

But if you’re weighing whether it makes sense to launch a new product as an Endorsed Brand or create an entirely new brand in terms of what this can do, negatively, to your parent brand, then building a new brand will generally win. If only because it eschews this subject entirely. 

Creating a new brand, by design, puts more of a buffer between your parent brand and new product. 

But if there's a possibility of reshaping what your parent brand stands for in people’s minds, while also giving this new product a boost due to a seal of approval from your parent, then an Endorsed Brand can be just the ticket.

Morning!

Today I wanted to answer a few audience questions we received during our CBC presentation back in April:

1. Do [fancifully] named beers within a Branded House become Sub Brands, or are they still part of a Branded House system? 

2. Do all of our labels need to look identical under a Branded House, or can they take on their own independent look and feel to some extent? 

—

These are great questions, and it’s easy to see why this can be confusing. 

So let's get to it.

Let’s get some quick definitions in place. From The Beyond Beer Handbook here:

A fanciful name is a unique name to identify a product (that you would usually trademark). That’s it. It’s legal jargon—a churched up way of saying “product name.” (e.g. 60 Minutes. Truth. 805. Red Trolley.)

A Branded House centers around a strong parent brand (corporate name and brand identity) that is prominently displayed on all products.

This creates a consistent experience across all your brands and touch points, building equity and recognition for the parent brand every step of the way. Visually, this manifests in the consistent and intentional use of logos, icons, typography, color and packaging composition.

A Sub Brand is a new brand (name and identity) that is still closely connected to your parent brand; but think of it as a little extra spice given to separate itself from the rest of your portfolio.

A Sub Brand still carries the same overall values that intuitively link it to your parent brand, but targets a specific audience or occasion with further defined attributes and benefits that might not be offered by the parent brand alone.

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An important point here for both of these models: Your parent brand is the main purchasing driver (the reason someone is buying your product) for customers.

(Above): KettleHouse uses fanciful names across their portfolio. But none of these beers are true Sub Brands. (Yet.) 

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So to question 1: Do [fancifully] named beers within a Branded House become Sub Brands, or are they still part of a Branded House system? 

Answer: They are part of your Branded House until you explicitly decide to scale them into true Sub Brand (or beyond).

–

A Branded House model means that your products are positioned as being clearly from your brewery. They can have independent, fanciful names and still fly under your parent brand's banner. 

We explored the shift from brand to Sub Brand in depth in last year’s Sub Brand Summer series (specifically, in issue 3).

A snapshot from that series is that every Sub Brand has a fanciful name, but not every fancifully-named beer is a Sub Brand. 

A fancifully named beer is part of your Branded House until you decide to Scale the Sub Brand Ladder.

(Above): Two examples of brands that are currently scaling the Sub Brand Ladder, including Left Field Brewery and Fernson Brewing. 

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On question 2: Do all of our labels need to look identical under a Branded House, or can they take on their own independent look and feel to some extent? 

Answer: Your labels do not have to look identical in order to fall under a Branded House. 

–

Again, the biggest point here is which brand plays the main purchasing driver role.

If a beer has its own unique name and label, but is still clearly positioned as being from your brewery, then your parent brand is the main purchasing driver. This means you’re still rocking a Branded House. 

A semantic point here: We call any system under which your parent brand is the main purchasing driver, a Branded House.

When all of your brands—let's say your flagships—fly under a rigid (nearly identical) template, we call this a Monolithic Branded House.

In its most extreme form, this would look like a rigid template across your packaging and NO fanciful names. So Prost Pils. Or Schlafly Pale Ale. Or Fernson IPA. Or Birdsmouth Black Lager. 

Your packaging does not have to look rigidly similar to work as a Branded House. It’s more about why someone buys your beer. And specifically, if they’re doing so because it’s from your brewery. 

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(Below): Zero Gravity's portfolio is a great example of fanciful names within a Branded House that don't fly under a rigid template. 

None of these are true Sub Brands, but they are positioned to be scaled up the Sub brand Ladder later on if the Zero Gravity team decides to do so.

(Above): A Monolithic Branded House eschews fanciful names altogether, in favor of Brewery Name x Style. e.g. Prost Pils & Prost Dunkel, Birdsmouth Lager, etc. 


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Wrapping up

Remember your Parent Brand’s role in your Brand Architecture. 

Ultimately, whether or not you introduce fanciful names and run your packaging under a rigid (monolithic) template is a positioning decision. 

If you’re a newer brewery, there may be some benefit to building your parent brand at every touch point. 

If your brewery is growing and you see a path towards building momentum around a horse brand or two, then adding fanciful names can set the stage for scaling that brand when the opportunity arises.

Morning!

A few admin items here before we get started:

1. For a more immersive experience, you can read this entire post over on our blog.

2. We recorded a fun conversation with Jacob Virgil, Director of Strategic Development at NoDa Brewing. He’s got a great voice, and we’re considering having him replace Cody or me (probably me) on the podcast because of it.

Listen for yourself here.

Okay, let's discuss NoDa's rebrand. 
 

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Legacy Breweries are facing a unique set of headwinds today. 

They’re big enough that they have to compete with much larger Big Beer brands off-premise, but still small enough that they compete with smaller, more nimble (and in many cases, more relevant) local breweries in the on-premise. 

In addition to these challenges, Legacy Breweries are often facing some sort of identity crisis.

This can range from a surface level issue (e.g. a severely disjointed brand identity and packaging where nothing hangs together) to a more existential crisis where founders and leadership are questioning what they stand for, where they want to take the business and even what to focus on on a day-to-day basis.

We’ve made it 15, 20, 30+ years, but don’t know where to go from here.

NoDa Brewing was somewhere in the middle here—not quite wrestling with existential problems, but not quite crystal clear on next steps either—when they reached out to CODO to discuss a rebrand back in 2022.

(Above): NoDa's previous branding and packaging.

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NoDa founded in 2011 in a vibrant Charlotte, North Carolina beer scene.

And they’re a perfect example of CODO’s expanded Legacy Brewery definition (founded around the start of the beer boom in a market that has since exploded with new entrants). 

NoDa was dealing with several compounding factors that lead them to the realization that they needed to make some major changes for the longterm health of the business. 

They developed a multi-pronged plan (to address production, distribution and hospitality issues), and tagged CODO in to help frame their Brand Strategy en route to a brand refresh and package design overhaul.

This case study will cover the following:

– NoDa’s background and project context (including pain points & opportunities)

– NoDa’s Brand Strategy (and defining their visual equity)

– A walk through their brand identity and package design process 

Let’s get into it. 

(Above): NoDa's previous branding and (all over the place) packaging.

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The situation on the ground (a handful of problems)
 

1. A shifting meaning of the NoDa name

NoDa was founded in the North Davidson neighborhood in Charlotte (hence, NoDa). Or technically, the brewery was founded near the NoDa neighborhood. 

If you want to get really pedantic technical—they’re about a block from the *officially* defined neighborhood border. 

And as they’ve continued to expand, opening additional production facilities and taprooms, being tied to a specific neighborhood became less important.

Overtime, the NoDa name has come to reflect more of the breweries core values (and how they overlap with the broader neighborhood itself) than a particular neighborhood or street.

In Jacob's words:

“What NoDa stands for aligns with the ethos of our brewery and is a big reason why we wanted to refresh the brand. Being the arts district, NoDa has always been an inclusive, creative and edgy spot. 

Our approach to beer, our brand and our taproom has always been to create a quality experience and product that is welcoming and approachable for people from all walks of life.

Beer is our art; regardless of whether or not we're still on North Davidson street.

As our brand aged we felt that it had lost some of the edgy / artsiness that NoDa is known for and we wanted to bring that back by emphasizing street art style illustrations on the packaging.”

 

2. Stock illustrations & dated visuals 

NoDa has used stylized 1950’s illustrations across their packaging for years. 

This Mid-Century aesthetic was very on trend back in the early 2010s.

In 2024, it just feels dusty (and not at all aligned with the exciting things happening at NoDa).

Another issue on this front is that some of NoDa’s primary imagery—including their best selling Hop Drop brand—is comprised of stock illustration that anyone can buy online. And they’ve built several major brands around these assets. 

This means that any other business, including a brewery, can use the same assets on their packaging. 

The takeaway here is that you shouldn’t build your identity around stock assets. You can’t police any of it from an IP standpoint, and you can’t build any unique visual equity either.

Using stock assets in your identity will always be a liability.

 

3. Charlotte as a rapidly changing community 

Two breweries existed in Charlotte when NoDa opened shop in 2011.

Today, there are more than 100.

In that span of time, each new brewery opening meant more niche, more hyper-local and more on-trend craft beer hitting the market.

And elder outfits like NoDa inevitably were seen as less novel and less (for lack of a better word) relevant.

All of this lead to NoDa being regarded as….


4. “Grocery store beer”

NoDa came out swinging and found early success (particularly with their renowned Hop Drop ’n Roll IPA). 

That brand—awarded best IPA in the world back in 2014—allowed their beer to become ubiquitous throughout Charlotte, and eventually North and South Carolina. 

Today, NoDa is widely regarded as making some of the best beer in a state that’s lousy with great beer. 

But, in a weird quirk that plagues anything just outside of the mainstream (music, art, film, fashion), NoDa’s success cuts both ways.

In our field work and interviews, we heard people pejoratively describe NoDa as “Grocery Store Beer,” as in, NoDa isn’t authentic, local, independent (capital C) Craft Beer anymore. 

(Your reward for blazing a trail in a market is that you get punished for being successful. Great.)

Jacob had an interesting perspective on this in our podcast (this topic starts around the 14:30 mark).

He views being carried in grocery stores and chains as a signal that you're reliable—that your brand can be depended upon to deliver. Every time.

(I agree with this, for the record.)

But Jacob and I don’t speak for the broader North Carolina beer drinker.

So the challenge remains: How can NoDa stay relevant while continuing to grow and build a successful business?

(Above): NoDa wanted to move away from stock assets and create unique, ownable illustrations and IP through this process. 

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Now that we’ve covered NoDa’s primary pain points, let’s explore their Brand Strategy and design process.

NoDa’s Brand Strategy & Positioning 

Three big ideas emerged from all of our fieldwork and stakeholder interviews:

1. NoDa is an epicenter for all the cool, creative stuff happening in Charlotte. 

2. NoDa is your reliable, local brewery. No trend hopping here: Just well-executed styles. Again and again and again. 

3. NoDa is your companion for whatever outdoors pursuit you choose in the Carolinas. 

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A quick note on these ideas:

These are all classic craft beer tropes: Celebrating the local community, making quality beer and a love of the great outdoors. 

From a positioning standpoint, hanging your hat on a trope doesn’t mean that an idea isn’t true.

But what’s more likely is that any number of other local breweries can also claim to operate by the same ideas. 

To wit: How many California breweries talk about the beach or surfing? And how many breweries in Colorado adorn their labels with mountains?

There's nothing wrong, or untrue about these things.

But it’s our job to figure out which idea a brewery can most credibly claim, that they’ve historically stood for, and have materially supported over time.

(Oh, and that actually matters to consumers.)

The first Brand Essence — “North Davidscene” — checked all these boxes and resonated the most with the NoDa team. 

They’ve always viewed beer as a through line in the emergent local art, music and food scenes. 

And this idea best aligned with their values (that is, how they operate their business, including behind the scenes moves that no one will ever know about), plus where they wanted to continue taking the brand in the future.

In other words, it is the most distinct, defensible, ownable and true idea that NoDa can build on. 

This direction positions NoDa as a vibrant, confident and progressive voice in Charlotte beer.

(Above): A few pages from NoDa's Brand Strategy doc.

These Brand Essences include a preliminary writeup, including brand voice and personality attributes as well as visual cues.

They also include mood boards to art direct the idea itself so the NoDa team can understand what a direction could look and feel like.

—

 

Defining NoDa’s Equity & Tackling Their Identity Refresh 

With Brand Strategy and art direction set, we now get to dig into NoDa's brand identity and packaging update. 

Location issues aside, NoDa’s previous logo was somewhat sacrosanct. (They’ve used it since founding, tens of millions of people have seen it and it’s plastered across their market on POS, vehicles and merch). 

Our job was to evolve it in this new brand voice and look and feel: To give it more heft and make it look more intentional.

So how can we beef up their core identity while building out a more utilitarian system of secondary iconography?

Our initial concepts ranged from a straight-line evolution to a more quirky option that leaned into the local art and creativity idea.

The NoDa team favored the more clear evolution so we rolled right into revisions. 

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*Note to reader: I’ll fast forward here. Basically, we spent a million hours (approx.) refining their main mark and rounding out their Modular Brand Identity System.

(Above): Initial concepts, including a whoooole lot of rejected work from our first identity presentation.

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A few things to highlight as we wrapped up revisions: 

– The more expressive colors called out in our Brand Strategy work are now able to come to life in NoDa’s identity. This punched everything up and kept it from being too staid. 

– The core mark became more simplified as we made our way through the revisions. I remember a great conversation with the NoDa team where we discussed how you communicate the idea of confidence. 

Our answer?

Talk less.

Simplify the system.

And let the beer speak for itself.

The Package Design Phase

We kicked off the packaging phase by focusing on NoDa’s best selling brand, Hop Drop ’n Roll.

We explored several different ways to evolve their dated (and stock) late 50’s Mercury illustration style.

It took a few rounds to get the composition and illustration style itself nailed down. But once we got there, knocking out the rest of their portfolio was fairly straight forward. 

Here’s a glimpse at some of what we looked at along the way, including initial sketching, revisions, illustration evolution and several follow on brands (seasonals, variety pack, etc.) we developed after NoDa’s initial scope was wrapped up.

Brand Launch & Beyond

We opened this case study by outlining the (many) challenges Legacy Breweries face every day.

But as we wrap up, I wanted to say that a rebrand is NOT a panacea. A rebrand won’t solve the problem of having too many competitors. And it won’t magically make younger drinkers start clamoring for your beer.

But done properly, a rebrand is an opportunity to concretely define who you are and what your brewery stands for. It's a chance to plant a flag that welcomes all comers to the fold, old fans and new. 

And if you get all that right, a rebrand is an opportunity to drive an increase in sales, even in this challenging market. 

NoDa knew all of this and we're proud to have helped them chart a path for their brand moving forward.