If you’re thinking about launching an extension in 2021, you need to consider what role these products play in your portfolio and how your current positioning helps, or hinders, their chances for success.
Let’s look at 2 examples—the specialist brewery and the generalist, both planning an extension.
1. The Specialist Brewery
If you’re an all sour brewery (and renowned for that), releasing anything other than sour beers can harm that positioning. You want people to think of your brewery when they want a sour beer. This example can apply toward any brewery that is known for a singular style—lagers, Belgians, functional better-for-you beers, barrel aged beer, etc. In this case, it might make sense for the sour brewery to create an entirely new brand—name, identity, packaging and website—for this hard seltzer.
2. The Generalist Brewery
If you’re known as a generalist brewery, you have more flexibility in what you can produce because that’s what people will come to expect. Releasing a Pils one week and a Baltic Porter the next are the norm and would, in a way, give you more leeway to release a hard seltzer under your parent brand (because you’re not known for any one thing). In this case, it could* make sense to launch the hard seltzer under your current brand.
*But even this isn’t always the right choice.
We’ve found that Brand Architecture isn’t black and white. Even when building fancy decision trees and rule sets, a decision should be weighed just as much against your core values, market opportunity, demand, and your parent brand’s positioning.
We’re working on a cool resource to help breweries manage this process. Stay tuned, more on this later in 2021.
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