Howdy. 

This is a shorter BBT issue than normal. Curious if you like the format or prefer the usually deep dives. If you get a minute, please let us know. Thanks. 

Yes, I like it — short & sweet.

No, I like longer issues.


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Hi, there.

We just wrapped an eight-month project that involved several rounds of consumer research and concept testing — far more than we typically do — so this is top of mind.

No long preamble today, let’s get into it. 

(Above): We spend a lot of time in Craft Beer, Rebranded walking through how to define your brewery's audience.

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1

Broad to specific 

Defining your audience starts wide, then narrows sharply.

Broad means understanding the big-picture factors — demographics, market size and category trends — that outline who’s even in the conversation.

Specific means drilling into the motivations, pain points, and desires that actually drive someone to choose you over everything else on the shelf.

It’s in that specific layer where you find the insights that make your positioning sharper, your messaging clearer and your marketing more effective.

 

2

The limits of Customer Personas

Customer personas are a marketing tool used to create a fictional, representative profile of your ideal customer. 

Instead of referring to a “29-year-old suburban mom with two young kids,” you have Sarah — CPA and Wonder Mom!

These can be useful for painting a picture and making your audience feel real. They help teams get out of abstract demographic data and into a relatable, human context.

But they’re not gospel. 

Too often, personas slide into creative theater territory: Sticky notes on a wall, overbuilt decks and arbitrary details about what shoe brand they prefer, what kind of dog they have and which podcasts they listen to (BBT, obviously). 

That kind of specificity sounds impressive, but it’s almost always guesswork or extrapolation. Further, it can be heavily influenced by the creator’s own values and biases.

This is a long-winded way of saying we don’t use customer personas in our work — at least, not in the traditional sense. (Sorry, Sarah. I’m sure you’re a phenomenal CPA.)

Instead, we focus on defining a handful of key insights we can actually build strategy around:

– Pain point(s): What is this person struggling with, and how does your product solve it

– Occasion: When and where will they most likely enjoy your product?

– Signal: What does buying from you allow them to say about themselves (status, taste, values, belonging)?

– Benefits & Value Props: What functional and emotional benefits are they getting from your product? What are they actually buying?

These aren’t just audience insights — they’re the raw material for positioning. If you can define them, you know exactly how to show up in a way your competitors can’t.

We focus on these because they don’t just help you understand your customer — they give you the raw material for positioning. 

If you can define them clearly, you know exactly how to show up in a way your competitors can’t.

That said, personas can still be valuable, because:

– They help non-marketing teams visualize who you’re targeting

– The keep your customers top of mind

– They give your internal (cross-deparment) discussions a shared language. 

We just find that once these core insights are defined, a full-blown persona isn’t necessary — the picture is already sharp enough to guide strategy.

(Above): An example Customer Persona from Craft Beer, Rebranded

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3

The traditional craft beer audience is changing (and what this means for your your business)

For most of modern craft beer’s history, audience definition wasn’t something most breweries spent time on — because it felt obvious. The core drinker was overwhelmingly white, male, middle-class and millennial (or older) already engaged in beer culture.

Siri, give me 20 beer names with hop puns.

That default shaped product development, branding, taproom environments and marketing tone for the last 15+ years. 

But this homogeneity is rapidly eroding. Women, people of color and younger, more diverse generations are drinking beer at higher rates than in the past. And while (here in the U.S.), white men still account for the largest share of alcohol consumption, that number is falling fast (dropping roughly 10 percentage points over the last decade and a half and continuing this trajectory).

The opportunity now is twofold: Broaden who sees themselves reflected in your brand while deepening your understanding of why they drink, what they value and how they want to be spoken to. 

The “default craft drinker” is no longer enough.

(Above): When you actually google "craft beer drinker" you're served up a pile of 2015 clichés. I guess we deserve this, but it reinforces my point. This WAS the traditional craft drinker for many years. But that's no longer the case. 

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4

A quick aside: Sales vs. Marketing

Sales deals in getting your product into the right hands — whether that’s a distributor, a retailer, or a consumer in your taproom. 

Marketing focuses on driving demand and excitement to get people — end consumers — to buy your beer out in the wild. 

The former is primarily B2B, while the latter is primarily B2C.

These functions often overlap, but they still involve different audiences, value props, channels and even language. 

When you’re defining “your audience,” be clear about which of these you’re actually talking about.

 

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Wrapping up 

Start broad to see the whole playing field. Then go deep to find the few truths that actually matter — the ones that can shape your messaging, guide your creative and drive your sales.

Audience definition isn’t just a customer exercise — it’s a positioning exercise. 

The sharper you are on who you’re for (and who you’re not), the harder it is for competitors to copy you.

The rest is just theater.