Good morning. (And happy Spooky Season to those who observe.)

We’ve written a lot about brewery rebrands this year and today, I wanted to discuss a somewhat unsexy, yet extremely important element of making sure these projects are successful: Organizing your internal and external team.

It’s easy (and fun!) to look at the beautiful identity design and packaging work that can come out of a brewery’s rebrand. But none of that can happen if you don’t have a solid project team in place as well as identify other key stakeholders to engage throughout the process.

This is important for research and gathering project context as well as critical emotional intelligence considerations later on.

So let’s discuss the various stakeholder groups you need to engage throughout your project to ensure your rebrand (or new product launch) is set up for success.

(Above): We dive into more detail on today's topic in our Craft Beer, Rebranded book and companion Workbook.

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It all begins with your Executive Team 

The most important group of people involved in your rebrand will be your Executive Team. These are the folks who are directly responsible for approving and/or vetoing strategic recommendations and design concepts throughout the project. 

Among this group will be a project sponsor (or "driver")—usually a Marketing Director—whose role is to champion the project internally, remove barriers, gather feedback and build consensus along the way.  

Each brewery will have a different management makeup, and titles, but we usually see people from the following roles on the Executive Team:

– CMO (marketing lead)

– CSO (sales lead)

– COO (logistics lead)

– CEO (vision & culture lead)

– XYZ other communication person (Head of Brand, eCommerce lead, Brand Director, In-house designer(s), etc.)

+

– Founder(s) and/or Owner(s)* (*if they’re still involved in the brewery’s day-to-day goings-on)

 

How big should your Executive Team be?

One of the biggest threats you’ll face during your rebrand isn’t your competition, or rapidly shifting economic market forces, or even losing your long time fans as you roll out the update. 

No, the biggest foe you’re squaring up against will be the dreaded committee. 

Whether this is an actual committee who has to approve design work (or a board of directors), or just something that arises organically as a desire to make everyone on your team happy (usually via compromise), any decision made by committee will drive great creative work into the ground until it is heartbreakingly bland if not outright bad. 

How do we prevent this?

By making sure that the number of real decision makers—your Executive Team—is small. How small?

As small as possible.

Smaller. 

Yes! That’s it!!

We like an Executive Team to be somewhere between 4–6 people. 5 is better than 6. And 4 is better than 5. Anymore than 6 people and you run the risk of designing by committee. 

I can keep beating this drum, but you get my point. The larger your Executive Team gets, the harder it becomes to make bold decisions and create work that is strategically-sound and beautiful and that stands out and that will help your brewery move the needle. 

Your Executive Team (along with your branding partner) sets the tone for this project—what do you want to accomplish? What pain points are we working to resolve? What are your broader positioning and messaging goals?

Don’t compromise on these important objectives. 

Keep your Executive Team small. 

 

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There are other important stakeholders who can offer valuable insights and opinions through this process as well. But before we outline those groups, let’s stay in quasi-Executive Team territory and discuss the Shadow Council.

Hidden Stakeholders (aka, the Shadow Council)

OooOooh the Shadow Council. (Does this sound menacing? I’m going for menacing and foreboding here.)

A hidden stakeholder (or, the Shadow Council) is anyone whom you don’t want directly involved at the Executive Team level, but whose opinion still carries enough weight to alter the course of the project.

This can include a founder or owner, a key investor(s), your board or possibly even a committee within your business. (We’ve even seen people’s spouses in this role, which is always delightful and not at all awkward to navigate.)

In the past, we’ve described this scenario as the “swoop.” As in, someone can swoop in at the last minute and ruin six months of strategy and design work simply by saying they don’t like something. 

We don’t use the “swoop” language when discussing this with clients anymore because it’s just too cutesy.

And in case I’m not being clear here, if there are people who fall into this category in your business, and if they’re not engaged early, often and throughout the creative process, I can almost guarantee that your project will, at best, hit the rocks at some point.

At worst, this can lead to a terminated contract and even worse than that, depending on how you look at it, this can lead to subpar design work that doesn’t help you grow your brewery’s business. 

Identifying anyone that could fall into this category isn't fun, and this sometimes involves a little behind the scenes politicking and tap dancing, but it's a necessary step in the onboarding process to ensure your project is set up to run as smoothly as possible.

So this is a serious topic, but completely surmountable. I’ll outline some ways we manage this near the end of this piece. 

 

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Okay, super serious and scary detour over. Now let’s discuss the other stakeholder groups you should interview through your rebranding process.

(Above): Awkwardly holding hands is the fastest way to unlock new synergies between our teams. Also, why would we use a perfectly good table when the floor is right there?

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Internal stakeholders to include

Your Executive Team is involved throughout the entire course of your rebrand. But there are several other important people with valuable insights who need to be interviewed during the research and strategy phase to ensure your branding partner has an informed lay of the land. 

You will generally see department leads (sales, marketing, design, etc.) on the Executive Team itself. But it can also be valuable to speak with other folks from those departments as well. 

So in no particular order, we like to speak with people from the following functions / roles:

– Marketing (including field marketing staff, social media managers, etc.)

– Sales (including field sales reps / national accounts / chain leads—whatever level of hierarchy your business has in place, it's good to talk with someone at each level.)

– In-house creative team (creative director, designers, social media folks, etc.)

– Production & brewery staff (head brewer, innovation folks, logistics & packaging people can become important later on as you plan to roll out new packaging, etc.)

– Front of House / taproom folks (long time servers, hospitality managers, etc.)

+

– Emeritus leadership: This includes folks who may have moved on from your brewery to work at another company (or more often, retire), that have valuable historic institutional knowledge about your business and are still interested in helping it succeed. This usually includes past CEOs, COOs or founders who are no longer in the business.

Your brewery may have other important positions that fall outside of these roles. If that's the case, add those people to your list so your branding partner knows to interview them as well.

Now let's outline some valuable external stakeholders you need to engage through your rebrand.

 

External stakeholders to include

 

Key Accounts / Retailers 

We love talking with key retailers when possible. These folks are often your loudest evangelists and do more selling than most breweries may realize.

I witnessed this firsthand at a liquor store just last month. I was looking at the cold box when a young guy came in and asked the person behind the counter if they had any local porters. (Yes, porters—I time traveled to 2006!) The clerk walked them over to the beer aisle and offered his opinions on 2 or 3 options. It was fun to watch. (I'm an Ethnographer now.) 

Beyond this role, key accounts and retailers are also a wealth of qualitative data.

They have a bead on which styles are trending and what people are coming in and asking for. And what sorts of other products are they buying alongside your beer. Etc.

We like to talk to retailers to get a sense of how they see the market evolving and the role your brewery plays in it.

Plus, involving them in the process shows them that your brewery respects their opinion (and can lead to even more evangelizing later on).

 

Distributors 

We’ve met some phenomenal distributors over the years who have offered invaluable insight into the local market. We’ve also met some less than stellar ones.

Quick aside: I love bringing distributors up with our clients to see how they react—does a vein pop out of their forehead? No… Cool, let's schedule a conversation. 

Assuming you have a productive relationship with your distributor, they can be great for providing invaluable insights on the local market and all manner of quantitative data. 

They can tell you exactly how many cases of each SKU is moving per week, whether or not you're hitting depletion targets, which products are moving and in what market and format, and how that all ebbs and flows with seasonal changes and stacks up against the broader market. They can also spot opportunities for marketing and emergent beer trends.

This all provides valuable hard data to balance the fuzzier, qualitative insights we're gleaning from out other conversations and fieldwork.
 

What about consumer research?

This may enter sacred cow territory here, but I’m not 100% sold on broad consumer research as being either helpful or necessary during a rebrand. (How was the research gathered? What questions were asked? How were they asked? What kind of person actually participates in a survey? Etc.)

But I do think it’s valuable to speak with long time customers if possible, so you can get their perspective on what makes your brewery special. The few times we’ve done this, it’s usually just been with regulars—Day One folks—from your tasting room. 

You’re probably not going to find anything revelatory in these conversations, but it will round out the other quantitative insights you’re gaining along the way.

Misc thoughts + wrapping up 

 

A process point: One-on-one meetings vs. small group conversations  

We’ve historically recommended one-on-meetings in place of small group (and especially large group) conversations. 

Our reason for this was that it allows everyone's voice to be heard. Even in small groups, one person can be extroverted, or have more influence (e.g. an owner vs. a newly-hired in-house designer), etc. By sitting down for individual conversations, we get clear points of view that aren't skewed by interpersonal dynamics. 

There's still a lot of value in one-on-one conversations, but we've also found that small group conversations are a great setting for your Executive Team to to work through ideas and discuss any disagreements.

Our view has actually changed positions on this (moving away from preferring one-on-one conversions) over the last few years because it's a great way to make sure everyone—particularly your Executive Team—is on the same page.  

You know yourself. And your team. And you probably know if a group conversation would work well or not. Keep this in mind as you prepare for your rebrand to ensure everyone's opinion is heard. 

 

On the Shadow Council (and how you decide who needs to be interviewed)

Whenever we bring this subject up with our clients, the tone can quickly become negative. "Yeah, X is an investor, but we don't think she should be involved for Y reason."

As we've already discussed, ignoring these people isn't an option. Over the years, we've found the best way to mitigate this issue is simply to listen to them. 

Sit down with them and involve them in the process. Make sure their voice is heard and that they feel heard. 

Don't assume that this person doesn't have any valuable insights to offer. (I would go as far as offering that they might even know something that you don't.)

If you (and your branding partner) treat everyone in the process with respect and dignity, your research will be more informed for it.

And this is critical for setting your rebrand up for success.

Good morning! 

A subscriber (now client) recently emailed us with the following:

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Hi Isaac / CODO:

We’ve been lobbying our owner to rebrand for the last few years.

We’ll brew around 2,200 barrels this year, and we believe we can grow the business significantly along with some major changes that will be happening in our community over the next few years (a major corporate headquarters is relocating here, new suburbs are springing up, a reimagined downtown corridor). 

The problem is our owner thinks that branding will only be important if / when we decide to package our beer. We package some beer now, but it’s mostly sold as carryout from our two locations and through a few local retailers. So it’s currently a small part of our overall sales. 

But our team feels like we shouldn't wait to get this process started.

Can you make a case for why branding is important for a taproom-focused brewery? I understand his point of view, though I think that by creating a great brand now, we’ll have that much more inertia for when we do decide to begin packaging our beer.

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I love this question.

We’ve run into this situation several times over the last few years. Not so much the need to persuade a founder that branding is important, but rather, we’ve fielded rebranding projects expressly because a formerly hospitality-focused brewery intended to begin packaging and distribution.

Now investing in your branding is a no-brainer if you intend to package. (At least I hope so.) But I’d like to tackle topic this from another angle. Let’s say you have no intention to package your beer (or at least not in the immediate future). 

Do you need a beautiful brand identity system when your beer and taproom experience itself is what will keep people coming back? 

Is it worth the effort, energy and cost to brand a hospitality-focused brewery? 

(Spoiler alert: Yes, it’s important. But read on.)

There’s a baseline list of reasons why your brewery should take its branding seriously, no matter your overall concept. We’ll briefly outline those points before exploring some of the more interesting, recurrent and overlooked ideas we’re seeing in our brewpub / taproom / hospitality-focused brewery branding work across the country right now. 

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A quick note on terms: I’ll use “brewpub” and “taproom” interchangeably throughout today's issue. 

I’m drawing a line between breweries with a heavy packaging and off-premise emphasis vs. a brewery that sells most of its beer through its own premise or hospitality network.

Universal reasons for investing in your branding 

Investing in your brewpub's branding is crucial for several reasons. 

Most of these points are universal, table stakes ideas. So I don’t want to spend too much time here, because I imagine you already know them (after all, you’re subscribed to a niche beer and beverage industry branding newsletter). 

But at a quick glance, compelling branding… 

– Establishes your Brand Identity System and differentiates your brewery

– Increases your recognition and recall (helping you stay top of mind)

– Creates emotional connection, trust and credibility with your fans (fostering customer loyalty and evangelism)

– Improves your perception and reputation (remember, people taste with their eyes)

– Affects your pricing (and your ability to command a premium)

– Plants a flag and tells the community what you stand for 

We can continue, but you get the idea. Now these concepts alone should be reason enough to properly brand your brewery. 

But let’s now move beyond the basics to explore some overlooked reasons why your hospitality-focused brewery should invest in its branding (even if you don’t intend to package your beer).

(Above): You can't create cool merch without a compelling brand identity or story.

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1.

Your brand is a platform (that can open up additional revenue streams)

Your brand is your most important asset. It is your reputation and story. It is your brand values, positioning, key messaging and your voice. It's an asset that will help you punch way above your weight. 

What we’ve seen over the last several years, in particular, is that your brand can be leveraged in compelling ways that both strengthen your overall perception and positioning, and help you grow your business by opening new revenue streams. 

A compelling brand can allow you to:

– Develop Beyond Beer products and extensions

– Spin up a lucrative merch program

– Open additional concepts (taprooms and restaurants) and become a hospitality group 

– Build a rich portfolio, complete with Sub Brands

– Open concert venues / event centers

– Extend into other relevant categories with lifestyle products

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Your brand isn’t static. And by thinking of it as a platform, you’ll be better positioned to identify, weigh and pursue these sorts of opportunities as they arise.

(Above): Fun examples of signage and environmental design from our portfolio.

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2. 

A compelling brand sets the stage for partnership opportunities and co-branding

Co-branding in the craft beer space is a major trend right now. We’re currently writing about this (stay tuned), so I'll just offer a few quick points here: 

– A strong brand can open doors to exciting partnership opportunities

– Collaborations with local businesses expose you to new audiences

– These collaborations can help to build your brand in a major way by associating your brewpub with respected and complementary concerns

And none of this is possible without building a compelling brand in the first place.

 

3. 

A compelling brand defines your Identity and Art Direction (it sets the tone)

This point is more tactical than sweeping and strategic, but (a BIG) part of the value of developing your brand is that it defines your overall look and feel. This manifests most meaningfully in your brand identity, but this affects several other important touch points as well.

Beer release art: If you’ll be packaging your beer, then this need becomes immediately apparent. But even if you’re not packaging your beer, you’ll still need assets to promote new releases online and in your taproom (e.g. social media content, untapped art, taproom menus, table tents, posters).

A well thought out brand identity will give you enough direction to make sure this work stays consistent and relevant (without having to reinvent the wheel with each new release). 

Taproom look & feel: What is your brand’s personality? How do you speak? What's your vibe? 

Great branding can shape how you layout your taproom, what sorts of furniture, fixtures and equipment (FFE) you choose during your buildout, how you handle way showing (directional signage) and murals, and sets the overall tone for your taproom. 

A proper branding process will demystify these important decisions and allow you to build a welcoming, comfortable space that people enjoy visiting. 

(Above): Beautiful examples of environmental design from several of our clients, including Fernson Brewing and KettleHouse.

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4.

Compelling branding attracts (and helps to retain) top talent 

An ongoing labor shortage is one of the most pressing issues we hear from our restaurant and hospitality-focused brewery clients. 

And this problem is compounding.

If you’re not able to hire the best professional brewers, sales reps, front / back of house staff—any role you need to fill—then your overall customer experience will suffer. Your online reviews and reputation will suffer. Your business will suffer, and on and on.

This point has always been valid: Great branding makes you more attractive to would-be employees. 

But today, this benefit becomes an important edge over your competition (all the other breweries, restaurants and bars that are wooing the same potential employees).

If your team is proud to work at your brewery, and they’re proud of what your brand stands for, then everything they do and touch will be better. Compelling branding fosters a shared purpose, motivating your team to deliver wonderful customer service and maintain high standards throughout your brewery. 

A compelling brand isn’t a panacea in this regard—you still need to build a phenomenal culture to maintain your team’s esprit de corps—but it does help to attract the right people to your business in the first place.

(Above): A well built brewery brand and brand identity should inform all of your touch points, no matter how small. All of these points of interaction with your customers are an opportunity to tell your story and delight them.

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Your branding is a signal 

Properly branding your brewery (defining your brand strategy and building your brand identity) is a signal to your customers, employees, community—and even yourself—that you’re taking your business seriously. 

It’s a signal that you intend to stick around for the long haul. (Otherwise, why would you invest in your identity?)

Your brand signals that:

– Your beer is well made and dependable. 

– Your service is impeccable. 

– And that your (potential) customers are welcome and will have a great time here. 

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And all of this is crucial, whether you intend to package your beer or not.

Hi, there. We're currently writing about co-branding. If you've got a fun example of this that you've done at your brewery, please shoot me an email with some pics. Thanks! 


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I was on a call with a brewery recently to discuss how we might corral their astonishing production schedule—more than 100 new beers slated for 2023 alone.

In cans.

They've burned through 2 in-house designers over the last 5 years and are wondering if they shouldn't bring more consistency to their portfolio, both to build brand equity, and so as to not run their poor designers into the ground. (Won't someone please think of the designers.)

More breweries are packaging their beer today than ever before, and whether you’re putting out ~25 new cans per year or more than 100, this core problem is worth exploring:

– Can (or should) you bring consistency to that many labels? 

– What’s the value of consistency in this case? 

– How can you make this change along the way so that it doesn't grind your business to a halt? (Breweries who operate this way often release their beers in monthly or bi-monthly drops, so there's not much time to slow down.)

So let’s discuss this today. 

What are some tactics breweries who package several dozen new beers each year might consider to make their lives easier? 

And then, we’ll discuss a few philosophical points that can inform how you think about your package design as a whole. 

Let’s start with some tactical considerations.

(Above): Good George Brewing — How can you stay consistent (and interesting) while releasing a constant stream of new beers each year? 

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What are you balancing? And what are your options?


What are you balancing? 

If you’re packaging 100+ beers per year, you need to strike a balance between speed and quality and consistency.

NOTE: I’ll keep saying “100+ beers” here to drive this point home, but again, this entire conversation is just as applicable if you’re releasing 25 new cans per year.

Speed: You need these cans fast. And you need new labels perpetually. When running this way, there’s often little-to-no time to pause and consider how these cans work together in a broader sense. 

Quality: There’s some truth to the Iron Triangle concept: e.g. something can be Good, Fast, Cheap: And you can only choose two. When you’re moving at this fast a clip, there’s not enough time, and often not enough budget, to put out all quality labels.

Consistency: Consistency might not matter in all situations (e.g. are you distributing or selling primarily via carryout). We’ll address this point later. For now, let’s agree that consistency is valuable because it helps you develop IP and better brand awareness over the long term.

What are your options? 

There are a few immediate options in this scenario: 

1. Create a rigid template and systemize everything 

2. Treat every single release as a one-off label (YOLO)

3. Create a flexible template (blending options 1 and 2)

4. Begin creating lines and Sub Brands within your larger release schedule


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1. Create a universal template

If you’re pumping out 100+ labels per year, it would be tempting to create a house template. One that allows you to change up some colors or patterning between each can, drop in the new style and beer specs and go to print. 

But could you imagine 100 nearly identical beer cans? While easy to manage, and affordable, this isn’t very compelling from a marketing standpoint. (Here’s another pic of the same can we’ve posted for the last 200 days. This one’s red! 4-packs are a reasonable 24.99…)

And this isn’t very compelling for your customers either, for whom, the art (plus the fact that this is a limited edition product) is often why they're buying your beer in the first place.

(Above): Examples of universal (global) templates, including Forest Road Brewing, Mission Brewing, Plain Spoke Cocktails and Prost Brewing. This approach works well for your core line of products, but can become boring if extended across dozens (and dozens) of new releases each year. 

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2. Treat every label as a one-off

Conversely, you could just go wild and treat every beer and label as a one-off.

I almost didn't include this today because it's not a strategy, at least, not a sustainable one. And if you've been reading along so far, you know that this approach is what leads to people pulling their hair out and wanting to create some sort of system in the first place. 

Despite these things, this is still done all across the industry. So let's talk about it briefly. 

This is more or less the default route for any brewery that has never formally considered its branding. E.g. If you've never given your brand or broader portfolio architecture much thought, this is likely where you've arrived.

I’ll be blunt here (we’re both adults) and offer that in almost all cases (that we've seen), your packaging will look terrible if you go this route. We see it every single day.

And perhaps worse, it will be inconsistent.

It's one thing if your packaging looks bad. But looking bad and inconsistent is a place you really don't want to be in. (Hot take: It would be better for your packaging to look bad, but consistent, than to look bad and inconsistent because in the former case, at least you're teaching your customers what to look for out in the wild.) 

Under this model (100+ beers per year), you’re in a numbers game, one where label quality (and consistency) will generally take a back seat to speed and cost effectiveness. Speed rules the day. 

How fast can we get this label designed, ordered and applied?

Times 6 or 8 cans. Every month. In perpetuity. 

This isn't a strategy. It's Sisyphean.
 

3. Create a flexible template

Our work with Left Field is a good example of how your brewery can release dozens of new beers per year while keeping them consistent and attractive. 

Our solution in this case centered around a base template with a panel for beer-specific illustrations that changes between each release.

This gives Left Field the best of both worlds here—each beer starts off with a template (swap the colors, drop in new name and specs, etc.) but then there's room to customize so all the releases don't run together. They do this via their talented in-house creative team or by working with a local freelance illustrator to create the art as needed. 

We've created similar systems for several other breweries and this approach works great. 

Ideally, you'd use the same illustrator and/or style, across all releases. But if you don't, then you're still starting with a base template that provides consistency across all labels.

In other words, this approach prevents you from going too far off the rails even if your illustration style wanders over time.

 

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Now that we’ve explored some of the moving parts to releasing 100+ beers per year, let’s shift into how you can begin to rein this all in and create some structure across your portfolio so you’re not always starting from zero.

(Above): Left Field Brewery uses a flexible template that centers around a consistent front panel and a section to house a custom illustration that ties to the beer's story.

Once the Left Field team has developed a beer name, they partner with a talented local illustrator for the can art and swap in the new name, color, specs in-house. Easy peasy. 

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When & how to start making these changes 

Let's step back to look at this problem for a moment. If you're releasing 100+ new beers this year, there won't be enough time to pause and reset everything with a thorough package refresh.

So how, and when, should you start to roll in packaging so that it begins addressing your important pain points while also not disrupting the important flow of new beers out the door?

 

4. Begin creating lines / families / series, each with their own templates 

Creating a universal template can lead to repetitive labels and marketing. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create templates. 

Rather than creating a universal template that you use for all of your releases, what if you created a series of templates that you use for specific styles or seasonals or series? 

A good first step here is to try to group your various styles, with the goal of possibly creating several themed lines.

So you put out 10–20 Hazy IPAs per year—maybe those go into one consistent template. 

Your sour beers get a specific treatment. As do your lagers, pastry stouts, etc.

I’m using “template” here to capture the idea that these beer labels look similar more so than they use a rigid, identical template. There’s still room for making each label look cool, but you’re not starting from zero with each new release.


Could you reuse art?

If your brewery is putting out 100+ beers per year, most of those are probably new recipes. You will likely revisit (and build on) some past releases that were well-received, but breweries who operate under this model thrive on experimentation and novelty. 

I bring this up because if you’re putting out this many new beers—each with different labels—then you’re not teaching your customers what to look for on shelf on a per-beer basis. New labels come and go, so your customers know to look for the new label vs. a specific one. 

What this means is that your fans likely won’t remember, or care, if the label art on this months hazy IPA was used on a West Coast IPA last year.

Your individual beers likely aren’t for sale long enough for most people to remember what a particular label looked like (and if a few do, does it matter?).

If you agree with this premise, is there any merit to starting each year with a plan to reuse a percentage of the past year’s label art on this year’s new releases? Even picking 15 to 30 labels to reuse would take some pressure off your team, and it might even give you time to incrementally improve on those labels before they come back up for print again.

If you do this over a few years, you will build a sizable inventory of labels (or at least label elements—illustrations, specced color, typography builds—that you can use as a foundation for new releases.
 

When to make these changes? (on building planes in the air)

We’re helping a brewery navigate this problem right now and one of their first concerns was that they don’t have time to slow down and go through a thorough refresh. Their exact words were, “This train never stops.”

So our solution, for phase 1, is to develop three specific series that are going to start rolling out in Q1 2024. 

They will continue releasing all their normal output while this changeover is happening. And we’re planning to clean up the stragglers and create a few additional series templates next summer so that eventually, there’s more structure to their entire portfolio.

Revisit our thinking on Staggered Rebrand Launches for more background on how you can roll out an updated identity over time. 

(Above): We worked with Indie Alehouse out of Toronto to rein in their stacked release schedule. They partner with a talented artist (check out those illustrations above) to create illustrations for each beer. We created a template and simple rule set to keep their packaging consistent throughout the year.

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Wrapping up

 

Does investing in design even matter at this pace and under this model? (What does your brewery look like in 5 years?)

I’m going to paint with a broad brush here.

Most of the breweries we've worked with who release 100+ new beers each year sell most of that beer as carryout. This can be on a daily basis from a cold box in your taproom or in big, hyped drops, depending on how you're positioned.

If they have any beer in distribution, it is usually a select number of accounts who take their latest and greatest, no matter the style. 

In this case, you need to consider whether you even need to invest time and capital into developing your labels?

The project I mentioned earlier where we’re helping a brewery create various lines and template series—they’re only doing that because they’re going to start distributing in a few new markets later this year.

Their beer will sell out of their taproom whether we design a slick label for it or not. But they realize that getting out of their taproom and competing in different markets presents an entirely new context. 

And now back to you.

So this becomes a question of how you operate. And how you plan to run over the next 5 years. 

If you're currently selling all of your beer as carryout and you have no immediate plans to change this model, then it might not make sense to invest heavily in your package design.

But if you’re planning on a making any changes, such as: 

– You're planning to begin distributing your beer (and will be competing with other breweries out in the market).

– You’re planning to evolve your portfolio to include more year-round offerings.

– You'd like to create a more pleasant (and less chaotic) work culture. And a big part of this change hinges on how you produce, market and release new beers.

– You're planning to create more lines and Sub Brands.

If any of these options are in play, then rethinking how you build your portfolio and broader label design can be a worthwhile endeavor. 

—

But beyond these changes, the biggest benefit you'll see from taming your label design system is that it will make your life easier. 

Imagine brewing 100+ beers per year. And packaging them. Now, you also have to develop a unique label for every single one. Oh, and you have to promote all of this. 

Exhausting.

If you can organize your portfolio into distinct lines and/or groups, and then create a consistent look for these batches, your life will be easier.

You won’t be starting from zero on each new release, and it will be easier for your fans to make sense of your new releases throughout the year.

Win-win.

Morning!

Our Sub Brand Summer series was prompted by a client’s question: 

“When does a brand become a Sub Brand?”

In parts 1 and 2 of this series, we’ve explored why Sub Brands are such an important Brand Strategy approach in today's craft beer industry as well as the different types of Sub Brands your brewery can build.

In today’s issue—our final installment—we’re going to tackle this question head on by introducing a concept called the “Sub Brand Ladder.” 

Whether you’re starting at square one and intend to create a Sub Brand or your brewery already has one and you're not sure where to go from here, the following framework will give you a clear path towards scale under this Brand Architecture strategy.

"The Sub Brand Ladder"

Your brewery’s Brand Architecture isn’t a static thing. Similar to your Brand Strategy and brand itself, you should revisited it as needed—whenever you’re planning to launch a new product, or setting annual goals, working through your ABP, doing some spring cleaning, and so on. 

This applies to your overarching Brand Architecture as well as at the individual product level—no brand in your portfolio has to fly under the same strategy forever. Overtime, as a brand grows in prominence, it will naturally start to slide more rightward on the Continuum.

This is a concept we call “scaling up and down” the Beverage Brand Architecture Continuum (pictured below).

The Sub Brand Ladder concept narrows our focus on this evolution to the middle of the Continuum, as you scale your new product (to, or) from Sub Brand to Endorsed Brand and beyond.  

Some of the ideas we outline below don’t fit neatly into one stage vs. another. And if you talk with two breweries who have built successful Sub Brands, you’ll find that they've taken very different, circuitous (if not serendipitous) paths to get to where they are today.

So don’t get too hung up on whether you need to complete everything in the middle rungs before moving on to the top rungs, etc.

Think of this less as a punch list and more as a tool box you can sift through and select from as you build your Sub Brand.

First steps – Creating a platform 

So you’ve decided to build a Sub Brand. (Nice!)

At the earliest stages of this process, you are building a platform for future brand building work. So you don’t have to create a perfect plan (and besides, your plan will inevitably shift given how fast industry and consumer trends evolve today).  

It’s important to note that the following items on their own don’t make your beer a Sub Brand. But you cannot build a fully-formed Sub Brand without them. (e.g. all Sub Brands have a fanciful name, but not all fancifully-named beers are Sub Brands.)

Some things you’ll need at the first rungs of the ladder include:

1. A fanciful name

Your Sub / Endorsed Brand will need a compelling name. This can be as important as your parent brand itself name, so don’t shortcut this process. 

Learn how to develop a great name here. 

2. Determine your Brand Architecture strategy & develop differentiated aesthetics 

Once you’ve established a compelling name, you’ll need to decide whether you want to initially position this brand as a Sub or Endorsed model. (Take our B.E.A.T. Assessment to quickly orient yourself here.)

Once you’ve made that decision, you’ll need to flesh out the brand’s look and feel. The level to which you do this will depend on whether you’re launching a Sub Brand or an Endorsed Brand to start.

To wit, a Sub Brand will be closely tied to your parent brand, whereas an Endorsed Brand will stand more on its own out of the gate.

In either case, you will need to establish some level of Brand Identity for this new brand.

3. A rough idea of how you intend to scale the brand

How do you want to develop this brand? Do you envision entering multiple categories, or staying nimble and focusing on a limited number of products? Does it make sense to (eventually) scale through Line and Brand Extensions?

Fast forward 5 years: What does this Sub Brand's portfolio look like? And how does this compare with the rest of your business? 

Your Brand Strategy will evolve over time so I wouldn’t worry about getting it perfect at this stage. But roughly charting out how you want the Sub Brand to relate to your parent brand and a few initial ways you think you can help the brand achieve velocity is a good place to start.


—


(Below): Fernson Brewing recently took the first steps toward creating Sub Brands within their portfolio, including introducing fanciful names and illustrations. Read a case study about this shift here.

Intermediate Steps – Giving it some gas

Now that you’ve established your Sub Brand’s important foundational components (fanciful name, Brand Identity and a rough plan for growth), you can start to lean into this and more formally develop the brand itself. 

There are a lot of fun things you can do here, but at a 30k foot view, you have decided to build a Sub Brand and are now working towards building this brand throughout your market. 

In doing so, you will slide further away from the parent brand on the Continuum (Sub > Endorsed — i.e. pushing away from parent brand and placing more emphasis on the new brand itself.)

Some of the more potent things you can do at this stage include:

1. Develop your Sub Brand's Brand & Marketing Strategy

– Frame your Sub Brand's positioning 

– Develop a distinct brand voice & personality 

– Develop unique brand values (if markedly different from your parent brand values)

– Firm up the brand's value props, target audience and occasions 

– Develop a unique social media hashtag


2. Build out the portfolio (and explore where you can credibly take the brand)

Develop Line Extension(s) if appropriate 

( e.g. XYZ IPA > XYZ Hazy IPA > XYZ Imperial Hazy IPA… or XYZ Lager > XYZ Lime Lager… )

Line Extensions are a natural path towards growing the overall brand and giving consumers more options for flavor, occasions, packaging format and price points. 

However, you don’t have to develop multiple lines in order to build a successful Sub Brand. 

You can build a strong Sub brand off the back of one product (e.g. Lion’s Paw Lager, Shipwrecked, Cold Smoke). But if your product lends itself to a Line Extension, then this can be a great way to further build out the portfolio. (TLDR: Don't Line Extend without a compelling reason or opportunity.) 

Read more about how far you can extend a brand here.

Create Sub Brand-centric variety packs (if applicable)

This one is dependent on whether you release Line Extensions. But if you do have enough products to fill one out, variety packs can be a great way to drive trial and slowly introduce (and test) new brands in your portfolio. (They also allow you to stay top of mind throughout the year as seasons change.)

And allow me to beat this old drum once again: If you decide to build a variety pack, make sure you view it as a brand building opportunity. So develop a theme that helps you tell a compelling story and capture a specific occasion or audience.

TLDR: Don’t call it a “variety pack” and move on.

Develop a merch program 

Creating a Sub Brand-specific merch line is another great way of building awareness and evangelism. It’s also another avenue for fleshing out your brand voice and personality while driving more revenue.

( Examples: 805 / Howdy Beer / Fat Tire )


3. Distribution / Sales / Marketing Alignment 

In order to scale your Sub Brand, you’ll need to dial in your distribution and marketing plans. You will work with your distributor(s) on this front and this process can include chain retail and national account considerations depending on your scale. 

You will already have a few priorities within your parent brand's portfolio, but you will shift dedicated focus and energy to growing this Sub Brand alongside these other brands.

Other items you can tackle at this stage include:

– Dedicated distributor plans (more emphasis in your ABP / distribution plan / sales rep priority)

– Dedicated marketing budget 

– Sub Brand-specific vehicle wraps & POS / sales materials 

– Sub Brand-specific tap handles


—


(Below top): Left Field Brewery is taking the intermediate steps of building out the Ice Cold Beer Sub Brand by creating a line extension (a "lime" extension, if you will), variety packs, fun merch and some smart field activation.

(Below bottom): Braxton Brewing does a great job of brand building out of the gate. Their latest release, Spur Amber Lager, came to market with its own defined brand voice, identity and launch party. If (or when) this brand achieves velocity, they can begin to scale the Sub Brand Ladder with whichever steps make the most sense.

Final steps – Taking the leap

At this point, the flywheel is spinning and you’re focused on maintaining the momentum you’ve built along the way. 

So as your Sub Brand matures, you’re doing more of the same work you began in the middle rungs of the Sub Brand Ladder: You’re continuing to develop the brand itself, you’re expanding your marketing efforts and budget and distribution reach.

You’re just doing all of these things better—more efficiently, more targeted and on a bigger scale. 

The line between the middle rungs of the Sub Brand ladder and the top rungs is blurry. So rather than trying to pin down a concrete definition (i.e. when you hit an annual CE target, when you hit a revenue milestone, etc.), let's say that you *officially* reach the top rungs when your team decides to take the leap.
 

“The leap”

Taking the leap means your brewery is fully committed to this Sub Brand and in doing so, you’ve decided to permanently decouple it from your parent brand. You may still maintain some level of Endorsement but at this stage, this is more to let people know that your parent brand exists than it is to offer a quality guarantee.  

Your Sub Brand (likely an Endorsed or standalone brand at this point) is now standing entirely on its own.

(Fly away baby bird!)

This happens naturally over time, and indeed, it’s usually the goal that your Sub Brand becomes more identifiable than your brewery’s parent brand. 

As an example: How many people know Voodoo Ranger vs. New Belgium? Or that Dale’s Pale Ale comes from Oskar Blues? Or Dead Guy comes from Rogue?

There are a few other items that you can do to commit to taking the leap. These can include: 

Filling out your digital footprint

– Create a Sub Brand-specific website. This can be a landing page, or a robust eComm site, depending on your needs. Here are a few examples of this out in the wild: Voodoo Ranger (New Belgium) / 805 & Mind Haze (Firestone Walker) / Skip Day Hard Seltzer (Fernson Brewing) / Arrogant Bastard (Stone)

– Create Sub Brand-specific social channels (unique handles and content, Custom Spotify playlists, etc.) ( Examples: @Drinkdales / @VoodooRanger / @HowdyBeer / @DrinkDeadGuy )

– Building assets (sales materials, POS) and tools (distributor portal on your website) to support growth and marketing

Fully realized team and budget

Start treating this Sub Brand like its own standalone business. To do this, you will need to put in place the systems and processes like any other business (staff, budget, SOPs, etc.)

– Build a dedicated in-house team to focus on the Sub Brand (e.g. Marketing Director, Brand Director / In-house designer, Social Media Manager / eCommerce Director) 

– Develop Sub Brand-specific marketing plan with a real budget (refining and executing what you framed during the intermediate phase)

– Building a dedicated sales program

Brand Architecture

– Build strategic partnerships (co-branding, sponsorships, stadium & concert venue placements). This will allow you to tap into additional audiences, continue building the brand and further enmeshing yourself in the community. 

– Complete marketing / sales / distributor alignment. This is builds on and clarifies what you established during the middle rungs of the Sub Brand Ladder.

Other moves to solidify your Sub Brand can include:

– Shift to move volume (multi-packs—variety, 12-pk and even 24pks) + channel-specific formats (single serve program, stovepipes in C-stores and concert venues)

– Create Sub Brand-specific standalone taprooms and venues 

– Create signature events / festivals / field marketing plans  

– Influencer marketing & partnerships 

– Ad Campaigns (Super Bowl ad? I don’t know… let’s dream big here.) And if you can’t swing 7 million for a 30 second commercial, then what else can you do? What is your Sub Brand’s Super Bowl?

—

Here are a few major brands that are taking the leap in real time (right now in 2023). Follow along over the coming years to see how these outfits flesh out their brand families.

Oskar Blues > Dale's  /  Bell's > Hearted  /  Rogue > Dead Guy


—


(Below top): Garage Beer is a great example of a brewery scaling the Sub Brand Ladder. Garage Beer started out as a Sub / Endorsed brand from Braxton Brewing. This set them up to bring in an outside investor and spin the brand out as its own property. We'll explore this concept—scaling up and down the Beverage Brand Architecture Continuum—in a future BBT issue.

(Below middle): A handful of brands that have taken the leap, including Fat Tire, 805, Dead Guy, Wild Basin and Dale’s.

Another cool highlight here: 805 is a best in class example of a beer brand that leans into content marketing and lifestyle positioning. This work includes bespoke video content, co-branded merch releases and partnering with influential brand ambassadors. 

(Below bottom): The skeleton in the room — We wouldn't be here talking about Sub Brands if it weren't for the success New Belgium has found through its Voodoo Ranger family. They're doing some super fun world building, including a standalone website (complete with an 8-bit video game), custom merch, unique social channels and brand voice and on and on.

When does a brand become a Sub Brand?

It’s a question of intent. 

Thousands of breweries have beers with fanciful names. But this alone doesn’t make a beer brand a Sub Brand.

It’s the intent to grow that specific brand as a more individualized family, complete with its own key messaging, value props, brand voice and personality that will push you across the line.

The Sub Brand Ladder isn't a punch list for you to check off over time.

These are stepping stones, or foundational blocks in the platform that allows you to move forward and build your Sub Brand (and your entire business) along the way for years to come.

Morning!

In our first piece in this series, we covered why Sub Brands are such a pervasive Brand Strategy approach right now.

Today, Sub Brand Summer marches on with a look at the different types of Sub Brands your brewery can build. 

We’ll outline and explore the subtle (but important) differences between Sub Brands and Endorsed Brands, and when each one can make sense for your brewery.

But before diving into that, let's first outline two important foundational concepts that will help you better understand this subject. 


—

Want to learn more about Sub Brands and Endorsed Brands? 

Foundational Concepts 

 

There are two key concepts to understand before delineating between Sub Brands and Endorsed Brands. 

1

The first is the role of the parent brand in Brand Architecture 

We discussed this at length in BBT Issue 22. But as a quick refresher, when we help our clients make Brand Architecture decisions, we’re most concerned with protecting their parent brand’s equity.

– How will this extension add value to, or detract from, your parent brand?

– How far can we extend your brand without losing its core meaning and relevance? 

– Can your parent brand credibly enter this new space? 

– To what degree should your parent brand be present on this new brand? 

Without a strong parent brand, you have nothing to extend. No equity. No goodwill. No reputation. No secret sauce. Nothing. 

This is important when you set out to build a Sub Brand because, especially in the initial stages, you will be leaning heavily on your parent brand’s equity and goodwill. 

The relationship between your parent brand and Sub Brand will continue to diminish the further to the right you move on the Beverage Brand Architecture Continuum (represented in the graphic below), moving from Sub Brand onto an Endorsed Brand and potentially a stand alone brand approach over time. 


2

The second key concept you need to understand is the idea of a Main Purchasing Driver.

A purchasing driver is the primary reason someone buys a product. 

Your parent brand and new product brand can both play this role depending on how you frame their relationship, and the line can become blurry as you make your way from Sub to Endorsed Brand.  

An important question here: Are people buying a product because it is explicitly from your brewery? In this case, your parent brand is the primary purchasing driver. 

Or, is someone buying this new product because of its own specific style or brand (and the fact that it’s produced by your brewery is either a nice bonus or doesn’t factor into their decision at all)? In this case, your new brand is the main purchasing driver. 

Back to the Beverage Brand Architecture Continuum (above), your parent brand’s role as the main purchasing driver diminishes the more rightward you move along this continuum.

 

—

 

Now that we’ve covered these two concepts, let’s define Sub Brands and Endorsed Brands.

Sub Brands 

A Sub Brand is a connected closely 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 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.

Under a Sub Brand strategy:

– Your parent brand is the Main Purchasing Driver 

– The packaging looks, more or less, in line with the rest of your portfolio 

– Your parent brand and new product brand share equal prominence on packaging

Sub Brands make sense when:

– You want to explore a new category or occasion while still flying under your parent brand’s momentum and mindshare 

– You know you want to create a new product, but you’re not sure what that looks like long term (e.g. will it become a standalone brand?)


—

Sub Brand Examples

(Below top): Fernson Brewing deliberately shifted away from a monolithic portfolio by building individual Sub brands. Read a full case study on this project here.

(Below middle): Left Field Brewery's Ice Cold Beer and Sierra Nevada's Little Thing Sub Brands.

(Below bottom): A collection of Sub Brands from around the beer industry. Note how each brewery's parent brand identity (logo) is locked up with the Sub Brand name / core iconography in these examples.

Endorsed Brands 

An Endorsed Brand stands mostly on its own, but with some level of endorsement—or, assurance of quality, trust and credibility—from the established parent brand.

An Endorsed Brand leverages the mind share and reputation of your parent brand while insulating it to varying degrees.

This can manifest as a “stamp of quality” or in a more meaningful alignment (think a similar naming element or thematic relationship).

Under an Endorsed Brand strategy:

– Your new product brand is the Main Purchasing Driver

– The packaging departs from your core portfolio’s look & feel 

– Your parent brand is relegated to an “endorsement” role 

Endorsed Brands make sense when:

– You want a clear separation from your parent brand 

– You have plans to scale and spin off the brand at some point 

– You’re targeting a different audience from your core line, but there is enough carryover (values, brand & story) that some tie to your parent brand can make sense.

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Endorsed Brand Examples 

(Below top): 7th Inning Seltzer and Say Hey Sparkling Water by Left Field Brewery.

(Below middle): Rhinegeist employs a variety of Brand Architecture approaches within their portfolio. These are two great Endorsed Brands. (Devil's advocate: You can almost make the case for Cincy Light being a Sub Brand due to how strong and recognizable Rhinegeist's core icon is. In this case, it stands in for their main logo no different than the Starbucks Mermaid icon or Nike Swoosh.)

(Below bottom): A collection of prominent Endorsed Brands from around the industry.

Conclusion 

At a quick glance, the difference between a Sub Brand and an Endorsed Brand can seem blurry. Indeed, they both leverage your parent brand to varying degrees and they both aim to build a platform for future growth. 

But the real difference, for our conversation here, is in your intent. 

If you intend to build up a new brand within your brewery’s portfolio, then you can look ahead to see which plan might help you best accomplish that goal down the line. 

Then, you can backward plan from there and arrive at which approach makes the most sense for your brewery right now. 


—
 

Now that you understand the different use cases for Sub Brands and Endorsed Brands, we’ll set theory aside and spend our final issue of Sub Brand Summer walking you through how to actually build and scale your Sub Brand.

Hi, there!

In our 2023 Beer Branding Trends review, we outlined an important shift we're seeing in brewery portfolio strategy.

All across the country, breweries are looking to find growth by building Sub Brands—or in the more common, non-Brand Architecture nomenclature, "Brand Families"—within their broader portfolio.

This is a natural move for larger Legacy Breweries for whom finding relevance with new drinkers is a life and death matter. But we're seeing our smaller, younger brewery clients build intra-portfolio Sub Brands with great results as well. 

In either case, there are interesting takeaways that you can think about as you shape your brewery’s portfolio over the coming years. 

We’ve written a lot about what Sub Brands are and how to build them. In today's issue, we’re going to outline why we think Sub Brands are such a pervasive strategy right now, what this means, and more importantly, how your brewery can explore this path if you think it would be a good fit for your vision and goals.

We're going to dive into Sub Brands and Endorsed Brands in part 2 of this series, but as a quick refresher:

What is a Sub Brand?

From The Beyond Beer Handbook:

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.

That is, a customer buys this product explicitly because it is from your brewery. With an Endorsed Brand, the new product brand itself is the main purchasing driver, with the parent brand relegated to an "endorsing" role. 

For the rest of this article, I'll use "Sub Brands" as a shorthand for both Sub and Endorsed Brand strategies.

Sub Brand Summer focuses on the Sub / Endorsed Brands section of the Beverage Brand Architecture Continuum.

—


Why is this happening? (Or at least, how did it start?)

 

Reason 1: Follow the leader(s)

I believe we’re seeing this strategy so often today because of how successfully it has been implemented by a handful of respected Legacy Breweries.

A few prominent examples include: 

– Voodoo Ranger (New Belgium)
– Little Thing (Sierra Nevada)
– 805 (Firestone Walker) 
– Beer Hug (Goose Island) 
– Golden Monkeys (Victory)
– Dale's (Oskar Blues)
– Wicked (Boston Beer Co.)
– Hearted (Bell's) 

We offered a similar theory recently for why high ABV beers are trending right now. (Question starts at the 1 hour 13 minute mark in this podcast). Basically, someone took a shot (in this case, on aggressively priced Imperial IPAs in single serve stove pipes), and it worked. It really, really worked. So other breweries followed suit. 

So take this dynamic, sprinkle in the macro trend of beer consumers shopping based more on brand than style, plus shifting Legal Drinking Age demographics and preferences, and you have a perfect setting for Sub Brands to thrive.

—

(Below) Follow the leader(s): A few leading brewery Sub Brand examples from around the United States.

Reason 2: The beer industry is facing major headwinds

I don't need to outline the myriad economic forces that are constricting the beer industry because you're seeing this firsthand every day in your work. 

But for those who aren't following along as closely, let's just say that between a recession and inflation, lingering supply chain shortages and dramatically increased input costs, things aren't looking so great right now. 

So how can a brewery survive over the coming rocky years?

One way is to diversify your offerings.

It's good practice to rebalance your investment portfolio every year or two to ensure you're not overly weighted in one asset class. This keeps you resilient and can minimize losses when things go sideways.

This concept applies to your brewery's portfolio as well: By building a variety of brands and products across multiple categories that appeal to different audiences, price points and occasions, you can keep your business more robust as consumer preferences shift and broader economic constraints are brought to the fore.

We saw a lot of this from 2019 to 2022 in the form of breweries releasing hard seltzer and RTDs.

But this move is category agnostic. 

For this conversation, we’re not drawing a line between beer or Beyond Beer products. Instead, we're focusing on Sub Brands as a tool to leverage your parent brand to grow your overall portfolio.

Reason 3: Sub Brands create a smoother path to market than creating an entirely new brand 

Building a new brand is expensive. And it's challenging. And it takes capacity (that you may not have). And to do it right, you have to invest as much time and energy and capital as you did when bringing your parent brand to market. 

But releasing a new brand that can come to market tied to your parent brand in some capacity can create a faster path towards gaining mindshare and driving trial and velocity.

I won't go as far as to call this strategy a shortcut, but it is faster and cheaper to bring a new Sub Brand to market than creating an entirely new brand (with zero tie to your parent brand).



Reason 4: Sub Brands are platform for long term brand building

We've written about the merits of Monolithic Portfolios vs. fanciful names and Sub Brands a lot this year.

One thing that we've heard from our brewery clients is that Sub Brands give your customers one more point of reference to grab onto and understand and bond with. Fernson Brewing mentioned this in our recent podcast conversation.

Think of the Bar Call heuristic. Someone walks into a bar and orders a beer: Which of these sounds (and feels) better?

"805, please." 

or 

"Give me a Firestone Walker Blonde Ale, please."

Our recent package refresh project with Fernson Brewing illustrates how Sub Brands aren't just a big, Legacy Brewery move. Smaller breweries are building Sub Brands with great results as well. 

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Welcome to the Era of Sub Brands (or, why Sub Brands are so hot right now)

For the Legacy Brewery:

Sub Brands are an opportunity to target a specific audience more credibly than you would be able to with your parent brand. You can bring to bear your entire scale (production, innovation, distribution, marketing, etc.) and launch a new brand with more force than a startup ever could.  

For a newer, smaller brewery:

Sub Brands are another chance to create something that resonates with your customers. And it creates a platform for future growth via Line Extensions, co-branding and a deeper universe you can flesh out over time.

For your customers:

Sub Brands are an easy way to cut through the noise of today’s cold box and find a new go-to beer brand family that never lets them down.


—


In part 2 of this series, we'll take a closer look at Sub Brands and Endorsed Brands.

We'll explore how they're similar, where they differ and how you can scale seamlessly from one to the other over time as your brand grows.

A client asked us this recently and Cody and I didn’t have as clear an answer as we would’ve liked. (Especially for two people who’ve written a book on Brand Architecture.) 

– Is it when you introduce fanciful names in your portfolio?

– Is it when you launch a Line Extension?

– Is it when you launch a variety pack? 

– Is it when you get a brand-specific tap handle?

Yes. It’s all these things. And more.

Building a Sub Brand is a matter of intent. And there are several layers, or levels, to developing one. 

– What are you wanting to build? 

– How do you want to structure your portfolio?

– How do you plan to thrive in craft beer’s “new normal” where what you’ve always done might not cut it anymore?

To explore this subject, we’ve put together a 3-part series of BBT newsletters and companion podcasts that will discuss why Sub Brands are such a pervasive strategy right now, the different types of Sub Brands you can build as well as a guide for laddering up and building your own fully executed and scaled Sub Brand.

Here’s a run down on what to expect over the coming weeks. 

Issue 1 (Why): Sub Brands.So Hot Right Now. (July 18)

Issue 2 (What): Sub Brands vs. Endorsed Brands: A Closer Look (August 1)

Issue 3 (How): How to Scale the Sub Brand Ladder (August 15)

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This series is a BBT exclusive, so 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.

Thanks so much for being here.

We’ll be back next week to kick this all off.

Legacy Brewery. 

(Sounds cool, doesn’t it?)

We’ve used this term for years in our branding work (and have heard it bandied about the industry for just as long).

I wanted to take today to define this more clearly as well as make a case for broadening the requirements to be included in this group as well as examine some of the unique challenges facing these breweries. 

What is a Legacy Brewery? (And how many are there?)

We’ve always considered a Legacy Brewery to be any outfit that was founded about 20+ years ago. That number seems kind of arbitrary—why not 25 or 30 years?—but it's always felt like a good benchmark. 

When we invoke this term, I imagine most folks immediately think of Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Boston Beer, DogFish Head, Oskar Blues, Firestone Walker, Schlafly, Victory, Karl Strauss, Russian River, Deschutes, etc. as leading examples from this cohort. And indeed, these companies are all fantastic examples of Legacy Breweries (and businesses and brands) that are only getting better with age. 

But we shouldn't just look towards these mega successful outliers for what determines success for today's Legacy Brewery. 

And looking at the numbers alone, these outfits are certainly outliers. 

If you discount the 25 or so "big" breweries that are in the Legacy tier, you're still left with a lot of older, smaller breweries. 

Remember, there were ~1,500 breweries in 2000 and ~1,800 in 2010 when the Craft Beer Boom began in earnest. So by this definition, there are approximately 1,500 Legacy Breweries in the United States today—that's ~16% of the entire U.S. craft beer industry.

But most of these Legacy Breweries aren’t producing 100’s of thousands of barrels per year. Most aren't distributed nationally. Most of them aren't grabbing industry headlines each time they release a new product or make an exciting new hire. And most of them have had a hard time rising above the frenetic noise of today's mature beer industry. 

All of this has lead to a subtle shift in how we define a Legacy Brewery.

KettleHouse is a great example of a Legacy outfit that leaned into its brand equity and rebranded to better position itself for the future.

—


Expanded criteria for Legacy Breweries 

We've rebranded several Legacy Breweries (those that are at the 20+ year mark). And we've rebranded several others breweries that are younger than this (somewhat arbitrary) age cutoff.

What we've seen in our field work is that both of these groups are often dealing with a similar set of problems and pain points. And on the other side of this equation, they're often eying similar opportunities. 

We've found that age isn't the most important metric here. Instead, we should focus on how many breweries opened in your market after you. 

To that end, we now consider any brewery that was founded before the Craft Beer Boom (starting in 2010) to be a Legacy Brewery.

So an outfit as old (as young?) as 13 years can be considered a Legacy Brewery. 

Yes, we still have an age cutoff, but this term is more inclusive of any brewery that founded in a much more open market and has since become surrounded (and sometimes overrun) with competition. 

So location, population density and the competitive set all factor into this expanded definition. 

—

If we dig deeper into this rationale (and make our way further into the weeds), you could even make the argument that a Legacy Brewery could have been founded in the early 2010's. 

To wit, if you opened sometime from 2011–2015 as one of the earliest breweries in a city that now boasts 50+ other breweries, you're likely in the same boat as a lot of these other Legacy Breweries. 

Example: When we first started working with Prost Brewing in 2018, they felt that they were already considered the Old Guard at just 6 years old in Denver's stacked market (currently sitting at around 150 breweries).

But alas, we need to draw a line somewhere or otherwise, this term won't mean anything. So again, this new definition does factor in age to a degree, but more so the amount of competition that has come on board since you founded.

(Above top) Mission Brewing is a classic Legacy Brewery (and then some, at 100+ years old).

(Above bottom) Prost Brewing would fall within the expanded Legacy definition of any brewery founded around the start of the Craft Beer Boom in 2010.

—


What unique challenges are Legacy Breweries facing?

While we learn something new on every single project, we do hear a recurring set of problems and pain points with our Legacy (and close to Legacy) clients.  

And to reiterate, for all intents and purposes, a brewery that is 14 years old and a brewery that is 29 years old are likely facing a similar set of headwinds today. 

Here are some pervasive themes we’ve heard in our Legacy branding work: 

“There's just so much competition that we've gotten lost in the shuffle of new entrants in our market.”

“We don't know what our story is, and we're not sure our fans do either.”

“Our current branding isn’t appropriate or even relevant for where we are today, or where we plan to take the brewery.” 

“We've had some major turnover over the last 5 years and our current team is excited to work and build. But we feel like we can’t accomplish anything until we rebrand.” 

“We're locked into a bad distributor relationship.” 

“Our sales were flat pre-2020. Now, they’re declining.” 

“Our branding and packaging are just tired. They haven’t been refreshed in 7 or 8 years, and it gets lost on shelf.” 

“We have several different beer lines and series with no central theme to tie our packaging together. None of this looks like it even comes from the same brewery.”

“Everything is inconsistent. We even use different logos on our flagship cans. It’s maddening.”


—


On Brand Equity 

Another unique challenge that Legacy Brewery's face is that, because they've been around for a while, there is often some level of visual and Brand Equity to consider as part of a branding update. 

Now, a five year old brewery will have hopefully built up some positive equity along the way as well. But there's a unique angle here, particularly amongst Legacy Brewery founders who are involved in a rebranding process: There's often more of an emotional attachment—and in some cases, an outright fear—that if you change things too drastically, people will not recognize you at all on shelf. 

We've run into this on several projects. A founder will say, "Well, we can't change that icon, or that illustration. We've used it for 19 years!"

But remember: Not all Equity carries the same weight.

—

Legacy Breweries, by dint of age, almost always have more Equity to contend with. And unless you’re completely wiping the slate clean during a rebrand (Revolution vs. Evolution), you will have more equity to wade through and consider.

What is important to our cause here? What is unmistakably us, and what can we build our identity and trade dress around moving forward?

What must be retained through this update, and what can be jettisoned?

How can we honor our past, and tell that story in a way that will resonate with new drinkers today? 

So what's a Legacy Brewery to do?

Between Big Beer, Big Craft, smaller, more nimble local breweries flooding the market and beyond beer products sucking up all remaining oxygen, Legacy Breweries are under a lot of pressure right now.

But you’ve got something that these other groups don’t have. 

Legacy Breweries are cool. 

Startup breweries often have to engage in myth making, that is, creating an origin story—sometimes out of whole cloth—that may or not be 100% authentic.

No value judgement here, to some extent this is required anytime you develop a new brand. BUT, you don’t have to do this. 

If you’ve been around for 13 years, or 15, or 25 years (again, the age isn’t as important now), then I guarantee there is something interesting in your history that you can explore in your branding and messaging.

You have an earned authenticity that younger groups don't have yet.

You’ve weathered recession(s), booms and busts, major events in your city and market—a pandemic—and you’re still here. 

You’ve been there all along, shaping your community, giving back, learning and listening and making great beer.

So lean into this.

Remind people where you came from (and show your bona fides)

Don’t hang your hat on just being old—on its own, this isn't a compelling differentiator. But there is an authenticity there that people inherently recognize. Don't be afraid to tell this story and remind people (current fans and new ones) where you come from.

Yeah, we may be ubiquitous. And you may take us for granted, but there's a reason we're still here.

—

People need a story to connect with your brewery. And you've got one.

You just have to figure out how to tell it.

Morning!

Quick housekeeping here: We've received feedback from dozens of subscribers who would prefer to read these longer form pieces on our site.

We're going to do that moving forward, where appropriate. We'll still send out full reviews / insights here in the newsletter, but crossposting these on our stories page will give you a better (and much larger) look at images and an easier link to share with your team.

Click here to view today's post over on our site. 


—

In our 2023 Beer Branding Trends Review we wrote about the merits of fanciful beer names (e.g. 60 Minute IPA, Pivo Pils, Cold Smoke) vs. a more monolithic, parent brand-forward naming convention (e.g. Prost Pils, Birdsmouth Dunkel, Plain Spoke Mojito).

This parallels another trend we covered as well: An increase in the amount of consumers who report shopping and making purchasing decisions based on brand more than style.

If we extrapolate these trend lines out over the next 5 to 10 years, it becomes clear that breweries with a distinctive (and compelling) brand identity, a clear point of view, and individualized beer brand names will be in a stronger position than groups without these foundational pillars in place.  

Today, we want to share a case study for a recent project with Fernson Brewing out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota that illustrates all of these ideas. 

For podcast fans, we recorded a conversation with Fernson founders Derek Fernholz and Blake Thompson on this topic as well. Give it a listen for more context in their own words. 

Okay, let’s get into it. 

 

—

 

We designed Fernson’s flagship cans back in 2015.

This original packaging was tailored for a mid-2010’s beer market. Bifurcated and minimal, each beer got its own SKU color, but the emphasis was on building Fernson’s parent brand first and foremost. 

To that end, and importantly for today’s conversation, these early releases all eschewed beer names. So you had Fernson IPA, Fernson Farmhouse Ale, etc. 

This packaging worked really well at the time. Especially in a then nascent craft beer market like South Dakota (and later, as Fernson expanded, neighboring Iowa and Minnesota).

Fernson’s original flagship cans.

—


But a few things happened over the intervening years that highlighted the need for more individualized beer brands and packaging. 

1. We already mentioned a broader trend that shows consumers increasingly gravitating towards individual brands over styles. So that’s still at play. 

2. Along the way, Fernson employed a series of talented in-house designers that did a bang up job of evolving and solidifying Fernson’s brand voice and ongoing package design aesthetic. 

3. And finally, the beer industry just became more crowded (~4,000 breweries in 2015 to over 9,500 in 2023 will do that). 

But perhaps more importantly, great design in the beer industry has (thankfully) become far more commonplace. As has new SKU churn (sometimes called “Rotation Nation”) and an overall hastening of the rate at which breweries refresh their packaging. 

That’s a long winded way of saying that packaging, even when well-designed, tends to get lost in the fray much sooner today. 

A collection of packaging developed by Fernson’s in-house creative team over the years. 

—


So several years of new in-house label design work + an evolving beer market spurred the Fernson team to start introducing fanciful beer names around 2017.

This happened accidentally at first with the release of Lion’s Paw Lager (currently, ~60% of their revenue). 

This lead to renaming a few other flagships to match. So Fernson IPA became Shy Giant IPA. Fernson’s Porter became Wagonplane Porter. And their popular Sour Ale became Curio. (These are all strong, strong names.)

It’s important to note here that these names were introduced on their original flagship cans. So while they were taking a step toward what would eventually become an important trend—developing fanciful brand names and stories—the change wasn't really that impactful. (You’ve got a great name, but on shelf, you just added two words to the same templated can. Big deal.)

So after 8 years of service, these flagship cans were looking tired. They were tired when compared to their broader competitive set. And even more so when compared to the exciting things happening across the rest of Fernson’s portfolio. 

There was a pressing opportunity to make Fernson’s packaging work harder for them out on shelf while also setting the stage for deeper storytelling and long term brand building. 

If handled right, this move sets Fernson up for potential line extensions and even scaling some of these beers into more fully-developed Sub Brands down the line.

So that tees up our project. Now that you know the top line context, let’s jump straight to a few early concepts we presented and discuss some important considerations we discussed along the way.

You probably already know the folktale behind the Lion’s Paw name, but if not, read more here.

—


We shared two directions initially, one of which (above, bottom) featured a beautiful custom lion illustration.

We were really excited about this direction, and the art itself. It’s beautiful, it would translate well to a painted can, it lends itself to merchandising and POS opportunities, and on and on.

But as excited as we were, it didn’t quite land with the Fernson team. 

(A foghorn bays mournfully in the distance. Another slice of my beard turns ashen.)

They liked the illustration, but felt like it departed too heavily from their established aesthetic (i.e. all those great in-house cans and releases I mentioned earlier).

Another consideration, though not as immediately pressing as the previous one, is that this illustration style is fairly complex. This means you have to have a specific set of illustration skills in order to create follow-on labels. 

This is an important parameter that we end up discussing frequently in our work.

We have to balance creating something beautiful and compelling that stands out on shelf, but that, in an ideal world, will also be able to be replicated by your in-house team. 

While CODO (and any designer worth their salt) wants to design every single label your brewery puts out, this often isn’t financially prudent. It doesn’t take many label design projects before you start to seriously consider hiring an in-house creative.

Anyway, I’ll fast forward here through revisions and share round 2 concepts.

(Above top) Various illustration styles we explored through the revisions phase. The lion shifted dramatically from complex and ornate to minimal and iconic. This ended up being a better fit with Fernson’s broader aesthetic. 

—


Round 2 was warmly received.

The chosen direction’s canvas (above, middle) is much more simplified. We dropped the texture and grounded the illustration in a fairytale-ish picture frame to add some compositional logic and make follow-on in-house label illustrations more manageable. 

I’ll fast forward to the final cans here because our revisions were fairly minimal and mostly focused on dialing in the illustrations (e.g. "Should we break the frame with leaves here?" or "To be clear, the giant shouldn't be fully nude, correct?") and finding the right supporting typography.

Our engagement covered Lion’s Paw Lager and Shy Giant IPA, and we're proud of how these turned out.

But more importantly, from an ongoing perspective, Fernson’s in-house team was able to use these as templates and develop a few labels (Farmhouse and Curio) in this new style in short order.

So that’s another important project goal that was achieved.

Fun stuff Fernson's team developed to support their refresh launch. 

—

 

We talk about brand building a lot. And indeed, there’s a lot that we’re leaving out of that conversation here: The importance of marketing and sales and distribution alignment. Field activation. Community partnerships. Positioning. Brand voice. Brand Architecture. Consistency. And on and on. 

But before all of that, you need phenomenal beer. And that beer needs a compelling name. And it needs badass packaging. 

These are all foundational.

And once they’re in place, you can build anything you can dream up.

Hi there.

Today’s topic is another request from our year end survey: How do you design better merch? 

Merch is a fun subject and something that some breweries completely knock out of the park. And others, well, they try (and in doing so, leave a lot of revenue on the table).

Your merch program can be a highly lucrative revenue stream if done well. So, let’s discuss this today.

I'm not going to into specific fashion trends here because they’ll change over the next year anyway. (Also, I’m wearing jorts as I write this. Literally. Right now. Jorts. My wife is horrified.) I’ll also try to skip the more obvious pointers (e.g. Hoodies sell better in winter than summer—revelatory!).

Instead, I’ll outline some evergreen things we think about when we discuss merch with our clients in the hopes that this helps your team create better stuff moving forward.

Let’s get into it.

1.

Your merch is a direct reflection of your business 

I’ve had the same Sam Adams keychain bottle opener for more than 20 years. It has dutifully opened hundreds (thousands?) of beers and every time I bring it out, I smile. (These days, it lives on the top shelf of my tackle box. And if I'm being honest, it's really only still there because my kids like playing with it when we go fishing. Aluminum cans rendered this old friend obsolete a decade ago.)

Now I'm not sure that it's reasonable to ask a t-shirt to last 20 years, but my point here is that you need to invest in high quality merch—quality shirts and hats, quality printing, patches and stitching, quality keychains, etc. 

Whatever you decide to offer, make sure it's well made. 

This is such an important point, that if you have a choice between offering cheap merch (junky, boxy shirts, poorly made stickers, cheap bottle openers, etc.) and selling no merch at all, you would be better off not creating anything. 

Do not sell cheap merch. It is a direct reflection on your brewery itself.

Left Field is Toronto's baseball brewery. That sells their outfit short a bit, but this is what they're known for. And their merch program reinforces this positioning and story with every single piece.

I can't think of a single piece of merch they've ever put out that I wouldn't want to wear. Check out their entire store here.

—



2.

Your merch can reinforce your positioning and brand story 

What is your brewery’s Brand Essence, voice and personality? How are you positioned? What are your values and key messages?

All of these things can be reinforced by your merch. Not just in design, but in the actual artifact itself. 

What are your fans into? What activity and/or lifestyle are you centered around? Thinking in these terms can allow you to go esoteric and fun here.

If you’re the fly fishing brewery, then go deep on that: Bandanas. Branded fly boxes. Sunglasses straps. Fanny packs. Branded waders. Or maybe sticker packs geared for specific places like a truck cap or a canoe. 

You can do this with any lifestyle or hobby.

You know what your people are into, so have fun on this.

 

3.

What style of XYZ should you buy? 

Trucker hat or flat bill? Dad hat or an unfortunate bucket hat? 7 panel hat or snapback? 

How do you stay up to date on the latest fashion trends? 

Take it from me—again, jorts—it's not your job to know what type of hat or shirt is trending right now. 

To stay up to speed here, I suggest following dozens of breweries you respect on Instagram and watch what they're doing. 

Here are a few client shoutouts to get you started:

– Left Field Brewery
– Fertile Ground Beer Co. 

And here are a few more groups (non-CODO clients) who produce great merch:

– Halfway Crooks 
– Austin Beerworks
– Surly Brewing
– The Veil 

I know this probably isn't as insightful as you might of hoped, but it works. You can’t know everything, so why bother? Focus on creating great beer and hospitality experiences for your fans, and let other folks figure out what type of merch does and doesn’t sell.

Then, borrow liberally. 

4.

Think beyond your primary logo (give your fans winks & nods)

There’s a place for logo’d merch. A big place. But if all you’re doing is slapping your primary logo on a bunch of shirts and calling it good, you may be missing out on sales to folks who don’t want to be a walking billboard, but would otherwise happily buy and wear a shirt. 

This is where your Modular Brand Identity System really shines. 

All of your secondary and tertiary marks—your icons, tagline builds and other bugs—are perfect for merch. These are exactly the type of winks and nods you can offer to folks who want to wear something cool and low key.

And beyond this, whenever we sit down to develop a dedicated batch of merch, we lean more into lifestyle and cool illustrations.

Think more band shirt than a corporate offering.

Is this design cool? 

Does it relate (even in the slightest) to our brewery's story?

Go. To. Print.

5.

Create merch drops & scarcity 

Whenever your brewery orders merch, you’re balancing wanting to order fewer items (in case they don’t sell well) with the fact that you can get a better price by buying more units.

One way to reframe this scenario is to think of your merch along the lines of your brewery's pilot program: Purposely order small batches and promote them as such. 

There are several benefits to this approach:

– You can test things out and see what pops. Does a particular shirt color, or style, or design sell out almost instantly? Then you know you might want to order more of that particular item the next time around.

– You’re also not left with hundreds of units sitting there gathering dust if you miss the mark on a particular piece.

– And finally, you’re introducing one of the most powerful nudges in all of advertising and Behavioral Economics theory—limited time only! If your hats are only available for a limited time, then someone might be more inclined to grab one now than if it was a year round staple. 

—

Buy smaller quantities to see what the market likes. Take notes. And refine on your next drop.

Bonus point here: Let’s stay on the pilot batch / limited release beer analogy for a moment.

Is there a way you can create a merch series that will encourage folks to collect? These could be enamel pins, hats, glassware, special prints—anything.

If someone like a particular design, then they may be more inclined to buy the next one, particularly if this is framed as part of a growing (and exclusive) series.

6. 

Create a beautiful retail footprint (please exit through the gift shop)

If you want your fans to buy more merch, you should make purchasing said merch as easy and pleasant as possible.

One way of doing this is to create a beautiful retail experience inside your brewery.

I suggest looking for inspiration out in the world here.

Go to a Harley Davidson dealership to see how they merchandise shirts and lifestyle gear. Go to REI to see how they merchandise camping equipment. Or take your Goth son to a Hot Topic and check out how they merchandise chain wallets and eye liner. 

Go to any store that has a similar vibe to your brewery (e.g. technical, outdoorsy, warm and inviting) and look at their retail displays. How do they hang shirts? Do they use mannequins? What sort of backdrops do they build? Do they take advantage of vertical space or is everything in bins? What sort of hangtags / retail labels do they use?

Creating a cool, inviting space in your brewery to house your merch can, in and of itself, help to sell more products. 

—

Bonus point here: I’m always surprised when I see a taproom employee not wearing a brewery's shirt.

If you don’t have a uniform policy in place, especially amongst your front of house folks, consider at least asking that they wear one of your shirts during every shift. This will get more eyes on your merch throughout the day and hopefully help to move more products.

(And another piece of low hanging fruit: Put your merch on your taproom menus. If you've got cool stuff to offer, don't be shy about it.)

 

7. 

Should you sell your merch online?

Selling your merch online is a no brainer if you're established enough and have a large enough following to justify the increased overhead (eComm development, inventory management, product photography, fulfillment, etc.).

If you’re just starting out (so breweries in planning, specifically), you can probably find better ways to spend your money than on building a slick online store. 

What is a large enough following to justify building an online store?

Great question. And I actually don’t have a clear answer for you. 

If you’ve got 25k IG followers maybe? Or 5k newsletter subscribers. Or if you make more than 2500bbl per year, maybe?

Or perhaps you just have big aspirations on this front and want to set yourself up to scale now.

The real question is: Do you feel confident that your merch is strong enough and your brand is compelling enough that people would want to buy your merch from afar?

If so, get after it. 

—

We wrote about breweries leaning into content marketing and email newsletters recently. If you have an engaged newsletter list, then selling your merch online becomes way easier (and measurable). 

You still want to over-deliver value on this channel: Give your fans behind the scenes stories, sneak peeks at upcoming releases, etc.

But if your fans trust you, you're allowed to sneak in an ad every now and then. If people love what you’re doing and want to grab a hat, then this can be all the nudge they need.

Hi, there. 

This is the fourth and final exclusive topic we’re covering here in our newsletter from our larger 2023 Beer Branding Trends report. 

If there’s someone on your team you think would benefit from reading these, please forward this email to them or have them sign up here.

Thanks so much for being a BBT subscriber!


—
 

Hard seltzer began its meteoric ascendency somewhere in 2018–2019. The ensuing period, led almost entirely by White Claw and Truly, saw several years of double and then triple digit category growth.

This created an environment where any brewery who was interested in releasing a seltzer had to move as fast as they could. Speed to market became paramount.

And what that meant (and in some markets, may still continue to mean) is that there were strict visual rules and category signifiers that you had to adhere to if you wanted to wade into the seltzer category.

The officially-ordained Hard Seltzer Canon®: White, (preferably) slim cans, minimal design, clean labels, black typography, fruit illustrations and secondary packaging (almost always a variety pack). 

—

Seltzer's Category Canon 

Any designer who worked on a seltzer branding project in 2019 would’ve pushed their client to differentiate, at least visually. (There was still too much market share available to have to worry about categorical differentiation with the liquid itself just yet.) 

And this makes sense at the most rudimentary level—if everyone else's cans are white, why don’t we zag and go full color? 

But as we attempted to push these boundaries with our own brewery clients, we ran into something that we’d never experienced before. CODO has handled more than a dozen seltzer branding projects since 2018. And during this work, particularly in those early days (~2019), we found strict opposition to the idea of pushing beyond the category’s (recently) established look and feel. 

There were rules. And they were written by White Claw and Truly.

As we attempted to push beyond this look—even when our clients were excited about it—we would hear from distributors and retailers alike that it wouldn’t work in the market. We would hear that if a seltzer can wasn’t white, consumers would think it was just another beer. 

This was frustrating personally, because in my mind, just because something hadn’t been tried didn’t mean that it couldn’t work. But hey, retailers and distributors have an important perspective in all of this as well. (And their opinions often carry outsized weight with our clients.)

So no matter how we felt about this resistance, we often ended up reining in those early exciting, vibrant—differentiated—seltzer cans to be more white and minimal and fall in line with their similarly-appointed brethren in the cold box. 

It would be a few years before Oskar Blues’ Wild Basin Hard Seltzer successfully broke through the category's visual rules. Good on the CANarchy team for taking a shot. 

—

 

What impact has hard seltzer had on the beer industry in terms of branding and category convention?

The most lasting change that hard seltzer brought to bear in the beer industry is that consumers not only understand that breweries can make Beyond Beer products, but in many cases, they are likely expecting these sorts of products from their favorite local brewery. 

I’ll take this further and say that by 2030, I predict that a brewery that only produces beer (with nary a Beyond Beer product in their mix) may be an outlier. 

—

Now, let’s shift away from seltzer for a moment and apply our thesis to the current darling of the Bev Alc world—ready to drink (RTD) canned cocktails.

Some of our more recent hard seltzer branding work. Vibrant concepts like these were impossible to pitch just 3 years ago. 


—

Do RTD cocktails have a strict visual cannon like hard seltzer (did)?

We’re fielding more RTD cocktail branding projects these days than hard seltzer. And while this category is exploding, we are not feeling the same pressure to follow a specific look like we did within seltzer in that 2018–19 period. 

As an example, High Noon dominates the RTD space. They are consistently seeing some of the strongest YOY growth of any brand in Bev Alc. Even more stunning, High Noon Cocktails are on track to become one of the largest spirits brands in the US. Think about the Old Guard being disrupted at the top of that list.

Now while there are certainly High Noon copycat brands out there, there is no broader push (spoken or unspoken) in our RTD work to mimic High Noon’s aesthetic, like there was with our seltzer work.

We don’t have distributors and retailers vetoing our early concept work and telling us to put a yellow circle and blue stripe on the can, anyway.

The Plain Spoke Cocktails brand centers around a fun, tongue in cheek supper club vibe.

—


So where does branding and package design within the Fourth Category go from here?

 

Challenge the category (but keep your consumer in mind)

While there are no concrete visual rules for RTDs like there were in the early days of hard seltzer, you still should be mindful of individual category conventions for any new products you develop.

Remember, people are looking for quick reference points to help them wade through a busy shelf and make a decision. (This is the rationale for why early seltzer cans had to be white.)

And category conventions (coupled with beautiful design and further differentiation) help people quickly make those decisions.

As an example: If you’re releasing a functional beverage, you can make it look however you want (there are no oppressive rules here). BUT, you’ll likely want to adhere to some loose aesthetic guidelines that your customers intuitively know to look for in order to jump out at them.

E.g. white space, clean labels, infographics and label violators extolling your total lack of X (carbs, gluten, sugar, etc.) or your total jam-packedness of Y (vitamins, electrolytes, nootropics, mushrooms, etc.). 

Or if you’re offering a Ranch Water, that might need to have a vaguely Texan or South Western aesthetic.

If you're offering some sort of cider-hybrid beverage, you might need to have an agricultural or aspirational autumn aesthetic.

Etc.

Consumers need a starting point of reference. And category conventions (or at least, a snippet of convention) can give them just enough framing to understand what you're offering and why they should buy it.

High Noon (whose own visual language borrows heavily from seltzer) isn't dictating what can and can't be done within the RTD category. 

The rest of these examples are just a fraction of the beautiful package design that is happening within the broader RTD category right now. Note the interesting format innovations as well. 

Read more about Good George's RTD line here.

—
 

Stand out. But do it with intention.

If you’re releasing a product in a new-to-you category, some of your early due diligence needs to include a category audit to break down and define the segment's visual ground rules. 

– What are the must haves? 

– What do people (consumers and your competition) take for granted?

– What opportunities are there for deeper differentiation?

Our best advice is to simplify and find a clear and compelling point of differentiation. Then, add or subtract from these specific category canons as needed to strike a balance between clearly belonging in the category yet rising above it.

Hi, there.

This is the third of four exclusive topics we’re covering here in our newsletter from our larger 2023 Beer Branding Trends report. 

If there’s someone on your team you think would benefit from reading these, please forward this email to them or have them sign up here.

Thanks so much for being a BBT subscriber!

Now, let's dive into a thorny subject.


—

 

What constitutes “adult” design vs. something a child might find enticing? 

What is our responsibility as brand builders and Bev Alc producers? 

And how can we prevent children from getting hold of alcohol, or at least how can we avoid directly marketing to them? 

These questions were first posed to me by Matt Kirkegaard on the Australian Brews News podcast (question starts at the 41-minute mark) more than a year and a half ago. 

My gut response at the time was that this falls on the parent to keep dangerous items out of reach of children, no different than kitchen knives, medicine, household cleaning products, etc.

This is still my stance, but if I’m being honest, I felt like this was an unsatisfactory answer—that it might too be too conveniently avoiding the question of a designer's responsibility in all of this.

I've been thinking about this topic off and on for the last year, and it seems like the rest of the industry is starting to have this conversation as well. 

Matt’s question was explicitly about beer package design. Is it responsible to put a juice box or cereal-box cartoon character on a beer can? (Funny to note that this doesn't even begin to address the adult Capri Sun pouches and boozy frozen popsicles that have trended since we had this conversation.) 

In order to hone in on this issue and somehow offer a few solutions, I’d like to shift focus away from beer specifically and towards the ongoing trend of traditionally non-alcoholic beverage brands launching alcoholic extensions in general (e.g. Monster Energy, Mountain Dew, Sunny D, Simply Lemonade, Fresca, Lipton, Sonic).

While I still believe the responsibility here begins with the parents, I want to explore this issue from a few different perspectives and finally give it the thought it deserves.

The problem (let's set a scene) 

Little Timmy comes home from school and, doffing his backpack and skateboard, opens the fridge and grabs a Mountain Dew. (He’s parched from doing strenuous Tik Tok dances.)

*scary narrator voice* "But Timmy didn't grab a Mountain Dew. He (unknowingly) grabbed a HARD MTN DEW."

Little Timmy cracks that bad boy open and crushes the entire thing in one go. He belches and leaves the can on the counter for Terry (his step dad) to clean up. 

A barren wind rattles the kitchen window pane. Winter is coming. 

END. SCENE. 

I'm guessing in most cases, this is the end of the story. 

We can spice things up and have Timmy hospitalized—getting his stomach pumped? Or maybe, in a drunken stupor, he steals and wrecks Terry's (his step dad) 2009 PT Cruiser?

Again, hospital.

But even without a hyperbolic ending, this is a bad situation. Even if no immediate harm comes from this scenario, children shouldn't drink alcohol.

And a point that a lot of industry watchdogs are making [Paywall Warning] is that these traditionally non-alcoholic beverages that “go hard” are an opportunity for accidental consumption at best, and at worst, are being outright marketed to underage consumers. 

 

Why this problem won't go away 

The last few years have seen a bevy of high-profile, traditionally non-alcoholic beverage brands launching alcoholic extensions. And they are doing this explicitly to leverage their brand equity. 

To wit, Mountain Dew launching a hard seltzer under a different name isn't newsworthy. But Mountain Dew launching HARD MTN DEW is something that gets attention. 

This issue isn’t going to go away because these extensions have been (mostly) successful. Whether that is runaway success or only limited incremental growth, big brands have big brand equity. So we expect the desire to continue releasing these sorts of alcoholic products will continue unabated in the future.

 

Why we (craft beer folks) should track this 

Just in case you think this doesn't apply to your brewery, my (completely buried) lede here is that as more mega corporations enter the room (e.g. Coca-Cola, Monster Beverage, PepsiCo), this issue will become more front and center in our industry. 

A craft brewery putting a juice box illustration on a tall boy is one thing. Coca-Cola releasing an alcoholic product that could be perceived as marketing to children (or any under-LDA person) in the court of public opinion is something else entirely. 

I think large corporations will be more cautious, and maybe even lobby for more label requirements and compliance standards to protect their interests.

I’m guessing here, but it’s not hard to imagine an eventual new set of labeling standards and compliance regulations that could affect all tiers of Bev Alc, from Coca-Cola down to your local brewery.

I don’t believe more oversight is the answer 

I want to state up front that I'm not calling for more oversight or regulation—the labeling oversight we have on alcohol (here in the States) is laughable anyway. (Shoutout to everyone who’s had a label rejected by the TTB that includes language, like Köln-Style, that you copied verbatim from another label that the TTB has previously approved.)

But the larger issue is that no matter how we build it—third party review boards, artificial intelligence tools, etc.—at the end of the day, figuring out how to reduce the risk of kids accidentally consuming alcohol with labeling requirements would be an attempt to measure something that is completely subjective.

The problems here are many:

1. What constitutes "adult" design vs. design that appeals to kids? To wit: I grew up mesmerized by the intricate details adorning the Budweiser and PBR cans that littered all of our family cookouts. And some of my earliest memories are of rinsing and collecting Budweiser cans. Was Budweiser marketing to me?

And if illustration-heavy packaging could appeal to kids, where do you draw that line? If we carry this out all the way, then half the industry will have to rebrand. (Maybe I should push for more oversight? That would be tremendous for business…)

2. Kids—more so teenagers—will find a way to get their hands on alcohol if they want it, just like they always have. I did. You did. And despite our best efforts, our kids will as well. 

This brings back my feeling that this is mostly a parent's responsibility: That we have to educate our children and equip them with enough self confidence and common sense that even when they do do something reckless, like drink alcohol before it’s legal, they do so with some measure of responsibility.

 

If we really want to solve this problem…

The only real solution here would be to develop a more child-proof packaging format. Think along the lines of an aspirin bottle or (some) cannabis packaging. 

But this only solves the issue of young children physically accessing and accidentally consuming alcohol. There is no real solution to keeping older children and teenagers away from this (again, other than education). 
 

—

I don't want to lose track of the larger question of our responsibility as brand builders to not intentionally or unintentionally market these products to underage folks in the first place.

So let’s address that issue now.

Some potential Brand Architecture solutions 

Most of the traditionally non-alcoholic brands that have launched alcoholic products have done so as straight Brand Extensions in order to leverage their brand equity. 

This puts these products on the left end of the Beverage Brand Architecture Continuum. Consequently, this approach has the highest probability of a child seeing familiar branding and mistakenly grabbing an alcoholic product from the fridge (Won't someone please think of Timmy?!?).

An across-the-board recommendation would be for these groups to move further to the right on the Continuum—likely releasing some version of an Endorsed Brand—and thus, put more visual distance between the Parent Brand and new alcoholic extension. 

One example here is Monster Energy's forthcoming boozy extension, The Beast Unleashed. On pack, the Monster icon is relegated to a smaller endorsement role with the product brand, The Beast Unleashed, taking the main stage.

This isn't completely differentiated from the original Monster can (e.g. it looks and feels like a Monster product). But hey, at least it’s not coming to market as Hard Monster Energy (er, Hard MNSTR NRGY).

Of course a child could still mistake this for a regular can of Monster Energy, but this is at least a good faith attempt at delineating between their alcoholic and nonalcoholic lines.

Jack Daniel’s x Coca-Cola’s Jack & Coke extension is another good faith example. This is a co-branded product that leans more on JD's iconic visual equity (all black background, white typography and filigree) with hardly any of Coca-Cola’s iconic red Pantone.

It would be hard to imagine a child mistaking this product as a Coke. 

 

—

 

This is far from a panacea, but if designers and brand builders want to address this issue through brand strategy and actual package design, I believe we need to have a stronger focus on Brand Architecture-specific solutions. 

This is where a designer can affect this process and responsibly shape what goes out into the world. 

If we go this route (and if parents do their part), we can all enjoy our alcohol responsibly and keep our kids safe.

Morning! 

This is the second of four exclusive topics we’re covering here in our newsletter from our larger 2023 Beer Branding Trends report. 

These insights are only coming out through this newsletter, so if there’s someone on your team who would benefit from reading them, please forward this email to them or have them sign up here.

Thanks so much for being a BBT subscriber!


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I had an interesting conversation recently with a brewery in planning that we’re working with. 

It centered around the merits of creating fanciful beer names and individualized beer brands vs. a more monolithic, style-forward approach (e.g. XYZ Brewing Pils, XYZ Brewing Hazy IPA).

After the call, I realized that we actually discuss this, more or less, on every single packaging project we work on because you always have to figure out the broader portfolio architecture. But we’ve never broken this out and examined it on its own. 

This particular conversation was with a new brewery, but there are interesting considerations for an established brewery that is preparing for a rebrand as well. 

So let’s explore this topic from both of those angles.

Prost Brewing builds a monolithic brand in lieu of creating individual beer brands. The works well since they are specialists (all-German style beers) and helps to reinforce that you can expect a singular focus with every new release. 

Backward Flag Brewing leans into individual names in order to tell a specific story and support a veteran charity with each release. 

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Let’s start with some definitions 

Given enough time in the market, most breweries will organically end up with a few different lines within their portfolio. E.g. a hazy IPA line under which you release several new beers per year. Or a seltzer line, or annual barrel aged release, year round flagships, etc. 

For this conversation, we’re focusing specifically on your flagship portfolio. 

There are two main approaches here. (Or, three approaches, if you consider that the first two are not mutually exclusive and are often used together.)

The first approach is a Branded House (or “Monolithic” / “Style Forward”) system that puts all energy and focus into promoting the brewery’s parent brand with no individual effort to name or brand the beers themselves. (e.g. Prost Pils, Prost Dunkel, Prost Kölsh)

The second approach entails developing individual, fanciful names for each beer within your portfolio (e.g. Cold Smoke, 60 Minute IPA, Truth, Pivo Pils, Dale’s Pale Ale). These aren’t Sub Brands (technically), because they still fall under a broader Branded House approach, but they do have the opportunity for more long term brand building on the individual beer level.

Now that we know what we’re working with, let’s discuss some pros and cons of each of these conventions.

 

Monolithic Portfolio (aka Branded House or "Style Forward" naming convention)

Pros

– This system builds your parent brand equity out of the gate because every interaction with a customer reinforces your brewery's name and identity. 

– This helps you get more mileage out of your marketing budget because every dollar you spend on promotion helps to build the parent brand itself. 

– It is faster, cheaper and easier to release new beers under this approach because, in most cases (though, not always), you’re also using a templated label. So you drop in the new style, ABV, barcode, etc. and you’re good to go. This is particularly useful for breweries who release dozens of new beers each year—developing individual labels on that fast a clip is possible, but will almost always end up being inconsistent as a whole (over time). 

– Your portfolio stands a better chance of “billboarding” on shelf (assuming you're using a templated label system).

Cons 

– This approach limits your ability to release line extensions of popular beers, lest you risk diluting your parent brand itself.

– It may be tougher for your fans to find specific styles at retail because you’re focusing on the parent brand vs. an individual name that they can come to associate with a particular style.

– It can become kind of boring over time (especially if you’re using a rigid label template system). This point can be mitigated by great package design, but a template is still a template at the end of the day.

But a push back against this: Boring means people recognize the look to the point where it becomes ubiquitous. Assuming your broader brand building efforts and the beer itself are continually getting better, consistency is always a plus.

(Top) Here are a few client examples who successfully employ a monolithic, style-forward naming convention. 

(Bottom) Monolithic naming is common in RTD / FMB branding as well. Here, you're using a specific flavor variant or cocktail name in place of a style. (e.g. 7th Inning Seltzer Key Lime, 7th Inning Seltzer Grapefruit Tangerine.)

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Fanciful (individualized) product names

Pros

– The most compelling benefit of developing individual beer names is that they can serve as a platform for future Sub Brands if you have a particular brand that really takes off. (This is much harder to do with XYZ Brewing Pils.)

– This sets you up for Line Extensions at the individual beer level without diluting the parent brand's positioning and reputation. 

– This creates an opportunity for broader storytelling if you use names that reinforce your Brand Essence and story. 

– You can more easily target specific audiences and occasions with a uniquely named and positioned beer. This allows you to go slightly niche without creating an entirely new brand. 

 

Cons 

– You’re promoting individual beer brands at the expense of the parent brand (though this concern can be mitigated through package design hierarchy itself).

– You’re adding one more element that competes in the packaging hierarchy (e.g. parent brand vs. fanciful beer name vs. beer style vs. illustration vs. tasting notes, etc.).

– This can be more expensive to create initially (name development and package design) and on an ongoing basis. (Though, I would offer that any money spent on your branding and packaging should be viewed as an investment vs. a cost.) 

– You have to develop yet another name. And trademark it. And then police that trademark. All of which costs money. (But again, this is an investment.)

Here's a collection of clients who develop individual, fanciful product names. Note the use of templates for some of these vs. completely custom labels for others. 

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Specific use cases (Startup Brewery vs. a Rebranding Brewery)

For the startup brewery

I think in most cases, a start up brewery should focus on building its parent brand awareness over everything else. 

In most markets, you’ll be fighting a pitched battle for attention. You’ve got national brands and legacy Big Craft brands and local brands and beyond beer options all jostling for an increasingly smaller spot in the cold box. 

So you’ll want to make every impression count.

This doesn't mean you can't develop unique beer names, but you should make sure that any packaging you develop hangs together closely visually out of the gate. (Note: this is more of a vote for templated labels than it is for a style-forward naming convention.) 

This can evolve over time to allow for more personality and brand voice on each individual beer once you see how the market responds to specific releases. 
 

For a brewery coming out of a rebrand 

A brewery that is rolling out a rebrand has more options here. The decision centers around any precedent your portfolio had going into the rebrand, your visual and Brand Equity and your long term plans and business strategy.

A monolithic approach can be a great way to introduce (and hammer home) your updated look in the market. 

But then, if you’ve been around for a while, you might have a beer or two that would make good contenders for larger brand families—possibly as Sub or even Endorsed Brands. So leaning into individual names for those could make a lot of sense.

Our rebrand with Mission Brewing is a great example of how you can blend these approaches to reintroduce a brand to the market (e.g. Mission IPA, Mission Blonde Ale) while also setting the stage for a future Sub Brand (e.g. Mission Shipwrecked Double IPA). 

Read more about this project here. And listen to a great podcast with Mission's CEO, Dan Partelow, here. 


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Final thoughts (+ an obligatory caveat) 

There are pros and cons for each of these approaches for both new breweries and folks coming out of a rebrand.

If there was a concrete recommendation to be made here, we would offer it.

But your brewery's specific context—your brand strategy, competitive set, portfolio makeup and broader vision—will all dictate which approach you should consider.

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But we will offer this: The beer industry is in a fractured state. Channels are being disrupted and encroached upon every day. Consumers are drinking more Beyond Beer options, and they have more choices for what they can drink than ever before. 

Breweries who focus on long term brand building are going to win.

And there are a lot of compelling examples of legacy craft beer brands who have done this at the individual beer brand level vs. at the parent brand level. 


When in doubt, try the Bar Call Test 

Would KettleHouse's Cold Smoke be the cult classic that it is without an amazing name that ties it to skiing (a Montana lifestyle staple)? Would someone just as enthusiastically order a "KettleHouse Scotch Ale?"

Which is the better bar call—“Give me a Cold Smoke” or “Give me a KettleHouse Scotch Ale”? 

Or would people drive from all over the country to fill their trunk with New Glarus' Farmhouse Ale if it weren't called Spotted Cow?

Fanciful names like Heady Topper, Pliny the Elder, Dark Lord, 805, Arrogant Bastard and Pappy Van Winkle give people an important point of reference for determining what role a brand can play in their lives.

And for brand builders, this can be all that matters.

Hi, there. 

This is the first of four exclusive topics we’re covering here in our newsletter from our larger 2023 Beer Branding Trends report. 

We aren't publishing these insights on the main report, so if there’s someone on your team you think would benefit from reading these, please forward this email to them or have them sign up here.

Thanks so much for being a BBT subscriber!

Let's get into it.


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Craft Beer isn't dead!

But we are operating in a vastly different market than the 2010–2019 era. 

There are now 9,500+ breweries in the United States, debt has become more expensive, and consumers are embracing new categories and beverages with open arms.

Success is no longer a guarantee and new breweries today have far less margin for error as they come out of the gate.

We’ve worked with several breweries in planning over the last 12 months (and are slated to kickoff with several more this summer). Beyond these projects, we’ve talked with another 30+ other groups that we ended up not working with. I say that because it gives us a broad context for what models and concepts folks are using all over the country to launch new breweries today.

Here are a few recurring themes from our project fieldwork and these new business conversations: 

 

On brewhouse sizing 

Most of the startups we’ve worked with recently who are building a brewery (as opposed to contract production) are starting with much smaller systems than what we saw in the 2010s.

Contrast this to just 7–8 years ago when the thinking of the day was why start small now only to upgrade later? Just buy that 30 bbl system today and be done with it (this rocketship will never slow down!).

But that was when craft beer was still in ascendancy, we were spoiled with historically low interest rates and organic growth was easy to trip and fall into in the beer industry. 

We’re still seeing traditional brewery startups (brewery system in back with taproom up front), albeit smaller scale ones overall. There are still outliers who put in (and can justify) a 30+ bbl system and swing big (with a market- and geography-dependent competitive set) early on. 

But we’re also seeing a lot of 5–10 bbl systems on deck right now. And even when we work with a startup that does want to put in a larger 20 or 30+ bbl system, more often than not, we’re hearing that they’re also considering starting smaller now with medium term plans to just open another location with smaller (say, another 10 bbl) systems. 

Managing cash flow has always been important, but we’re seeing a more conservative approach to brewery build outs right now (i.e. I’m hearing less “we’ll build this plane in the air” and more “we’ll have a diverse portfolio that caters to the following specific audiences and we will try to build with cash as much as possible…”).

And I think this will serve these groups well as they come to market. They're set up to weather this (hopefully short) downturn and can grow more methodically over the next decade.

Packaging from day one (usually for carryout)

Out of the half dozen start-up breweries we’ve worked with in the last year, only two had plans to come to market without packaging.

This is a major shift from six or seven years ago where packaging was something a brewery grew into when demand and brand awareness was there (almost always with an eye towards retail and distribution.)

The interesting shift we’re seeing now is that a lot of breweries are investing in package design specifically as a carryout format from their taproom with no immediate intention of getting into broader off-premise or distribution.

This is interesting because packaging certainly isn’t cheap (granted, if packaging is for carryout only, your brewery isn’t also getting a haircut from a distributor and a retailer). But it is still more expensive than, say, filling crowlers for carryout at the start of each week. 

We’ve heard a few reasons for this:

– Growlers are out of fashion (in some markets). We can use Crowlers, but our consumers want more beer to take home in standard formats to drink when desired.

Quick aside here: We haven’t designed a growler in years. And personally, I haven’t regularly used one since, maybe 2018? Is anyone out there still regularly using growlers? Shoot me an email if you do and tell me where you are, why you use them and just how dirty your growler is. 

– COVID broke everything (habits, conventions, occasions, etc.) and now consumers just expect that you’ll have packaging. 

– It’s a cool chance to showcase your branding. 

– You want packaging because you’ve always dreamed of it. We’ve heard this sentiment a lot over the years, (and as a business owner myself, I never discount it). 

When you’re dreaming up your brewery and business plan, a big part of that visualization, for a lot of folks, is packaging. Seeing your can in a cooler or in a cold box somewhere is what makes your brewery "real." So even if it doesn't make complete financial sense, there may still be a drive to begin packaging just because you want to. 

– You plan to package your beer at some point anyway, so why not do it now?

At some point over the last few years, packaged beer became an important part of most new breweries' product mix. (Again, maybe this is attributable to the pandemic-induced shifts to our habits and expectations.)  

Whatever the reason, this trend appears to be sticky and we see no signs of it slowing down in our current project inquiries. So much so that I’m surprised when I talk with a brewery in planning that isn’t planning to package their beer out of the gate.
 

A real focus on hospitality & food service

A brewery that plans to be in business ten years from now has to get everything right: Better beer, better customer service, better hospitality, better financial management and… better food? It’s looking that way.

We’re working with a lot of brewery founders who either come from a hospitality and restaurant background, or, are partnering with someone from that domain to shore up that side of their concept.

We’re hearing that having a dialed-in food program (no, Hot Pockets don’t count) is increasingly important to attract customers because you can capture more of their business. If someone is going to go to a restaurant and grab a few beers later, or grab a few beers en route to a restaurant, why not offer both ends of that spectrum and capture a larger ticket?

This maps to another trend we’re seeing of breweries putting in real-deal restaurants and food concepts. This can be done via bringing in an existing food partner to run a business within their business in a way that benefits both parties. (But be wary of who you partner with. An unreliable operator can cause your brewery to permanently lose customers.)

It probably goes without saying that operating a restaurant is every bit as challenging as running a brewery, so don’t read this section and shift your plans without doing a whole lot of research. But if your brewery does include a food component, you may be better set up for the long term.

 

People are buying (and/or hermit crabbing their way into) breweries

We’ve worked with several groups, and talked with several more, that have purchased (or are planning to purchase) a brewery. 

We’ve seen so much of this type of engagement that we explored this trend in detail in Issue 25 of the Beer Branding Trends Newsletter as well as a popular companion podcast episode. 

I’m including this here because I think this is a great way for someone to get into the brewing industry. This approach isn’t for everyone, but if you’re an operator—i.e. you’re good at building systems and SOPs, you’re good at running off of a playbook, and you’re good at building a team—these turnkey brewery purchases can be an attractive play. 

And on a more negative note (or positive, depending on where you are in this equation), there will be a lot of breweries for sale over the coming year(s). So if this is an interesting idea to you, keep your ears open. Opportunities abound.

Filling out the map (where are people putting in breweries?)

In the last year, we’ve worked with startups in Brooklyn, Orlando, Cleveland and San Francisco. But we’ve also seen a lot of inquiries from smaller, overlooked markets, including suburbs, exurbs and downright rural markets. 

Quick note: We’re seeing this same phenomenon in our Canadian beer branding work. We’ve done a lot of work in Toronto over the years. But we’re also working with breweries in smaller cities, provinces and markets all across the country right now.

This could be a lagging effect from the 2020 remote work drive that saw tens of millions of folks leave cities for more far off locales. Or, it could be that there are opportunities to be found in these further afield markets (all those Millennials are settling down to raise families in the suburbs, so why not cater to them?).

No brick & mortar (contract brewing & lifestyle brands)

We’ve done a lot of consulting work and brand building this year for clients who don’t have a brick and mortar location (no brewery, no distillery, no tasting room, nothing). 

The flow goes like this: You start with an idea > hire a beverage development group to create the recipe(s) > find a co-packer to produce it (can be a dedicated co-packer or a brewery that will contract brew for you) > hire a design firm to develop stellar branding and packaging > sign on with a distributor to get it into retail > profit(!!!).

We predicted more of this in last year’s Beer Branding Trends Review—particularly the rise of lifestyle brands—and it’s looking like that’s proving to be correct. Based on our inquiries so far this Spring, it looks like this will be an increasingly common path to market for new breweries and beverage brands.

The following are two specific business models that we're seeing folks execute via contract manufacturing:

1. Lifestyle brands with a hyper-niche focus to stand out 

We’ve written before about how a lifestyle brand is hard to define and you kind of know one when you see it. But that’s not helpful advice to someone who is considering this sort of positioning and model when starting a new brewery or beverage brand. 

We've found a few key things that successful lifestyle brands have in common:

– They target a niche subculture exclusively

– They are aspirational (positioned as embodying a particular ethos or lifestyle)

– They go heavy on merch to foster in-group identification 

– They are generally digitally native (or contract produced for beverages) to start 

– And most importantly, the values that a lifestyle brand embodies are as important as the product itself because they allow a consumer to find belonging. This is the real magic that makes these plays work

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We think lifestyle brands will become an increasingly common strategy for launching new Bev Alc brands over the next several years.

The ability to start lean and create something that speaks directly to a well-defined, ardent audience may be a safer bet than opening yet another taproom in a city full of taprooms.

Not to mention the much, much leaner capital needed out of the gate vs. building a traditional brewery.

2. Heritage intellectual property brands

Heritage intellectual property (IP) work is a fun formula where someone obtains IP rights for a long defunct (usually pre-, or just post-Prohibition) beer brand and faithfully reproduces it—recipe, branding, packaging and all.

We think this idea is an enormous, untapped opportunity that we’re going to see way more of in the coming five years. 

This trend started years ago with the reemergence of major national brands like PBR, Miller High Life, Hamms, Rainier and Narragansett.

To give you a sense of this scale: There were 1,300 breweries in the United States before prohibition. And only 100 made it through that boondoggle. How many of these brands are still trademarked or owned by someone? And beyond that, how many breweries folded between 1940 and 1970? (There’s gold in them hills… if you know where to look)

This play can work well for a few reasons:

1. It brings instant provenance and story to the table. It’s an opportunity to lean into all that real authenticity and history to create a connection with customers. No myth making needed.

2. For the existing brewery, and from a portfolio and product mix standpoint, it's an easy way to create a strong one-off brand (or Sub Brand) to help bolster sales.

3. For the startup, you can bring it to market in a lean way. E.g. hire a branding firm to get all the visual and design assets squared away, and then have a brewery contract brew it for you. 

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We’re working on a dedicated series that will showcase some of the work we’re doing in this space and why we’re so excited about the opportunities these moves represent. Stay tuned.

Hello, hello, hello!

Sorry for the exclamations point. I'm actually exclaiming though, because CODO's 2023 Beer Branding Trends Review is out today. 

1. Read the report here.

2. And if audio is more your speed, we recorded a companion podcast episode that serves as high level overview of this piece as well. Listen to that here.

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Now for some fun stuff you can expect over the coming month

We're experimenting with this report's format this year and are excited to see what you think. 

As a thank you for being a BBT subscriber, we're pulling out 4 specific portions of this report and sending them to you alone.

These include: 

1. Paths to Market for Startups 
2. Monolithic Portfolio vs. Fanciful Naming Strategy Considerations 
3. Alcohol & Minors: What is our Responsibility as Designers? 
4. Seltzer vs. RTD Visual Canon 

These issues are newsletter exclusives (they won't be published in the broader report), so you can brag to your friends who aren't BBT subscribers about how much more informed you are on all things beer branding and marketing.

(Kidding! Kind of.) 

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 review 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:

Beer Branding & Portfolio Strategy 

• Rebrands vs. Refreshes
• Brand vs. Style (on long term brand building)
• Changing LDA demographics 
• Multipacks in ascendancy
• Paths to Market for Startups (Newsletter Exclusive)