Why good beer marketing matters

Speaking at the Brewers Congress yesterday, brand storytelling and content marketing agency Untold’s director Rob Cowen said: “So many breweries believe that they don’t need marketing right up until the point when they do, and of course, much like a lifeboat, by that point it’s usually too late.”

Informing an experience

Cowen explained that “most of us think brewing ends when the beer reaches someone’s mouth, but we know that’s actually where everything starts, because in that second, everything else rushes in to form the experience”.

Giving examples, Cowen highlighted that the elements that help to sculpt our opinions on beer also include: “Where the beer is from, who made it, how it was made, its ingredients, its branding, its glass, the stories about it on social media, in films, in press, how the person who served it at the bar described it when someone asked, ‘What’s good tonight?’”

‘Product, serve and story’

He pointed out that even though “the drinker tastes the beer, that taste is shaped by a story they’ve been given or one they’ve learned”.

Cowen explained that there were three fundamental elements that “all breweries should care about” and these are “product, serve, and story”. But he lamented that “most only focus on the first two”. However, Cowen explained that the “story is every bit as important as the first two” because “the first two don’t work without a third”.

Giving an example of how a story can become not just anecdotal, but also shape how we consider a brewery’s approach to creating a premium product, Untold Agency director Theo Cooper described how “when Ken Grossman started Sierra Nevada, legend has it he pulled 10 of the first 12 batches away because it just wasn’t good enough. It didn’t meet the spec that he wanted it to meet, and he would not sell it until it met that spec. The rest is history when it comes to their famous pale ale. But I think you know most people here can relate to that sense of quality control”.

This, Untold’s Cooper and Cowen revealed is something that any brewery can do if they just set their mind to the things that are important and integral to when things began and what turned their idea for a brewery into a reality. All they need to do is communicate that with earnest verve and show a side that is relatable and retellable.

A ‘story mindset’

Cowen advised: “You start with a story mindset. You go back and you look at what you are as a brewer, as a brewery. What was born out of an obsession? Do you brew with a particular water, a particular malt, or an old kit. What are your ingredients? What’s special about the place you come from? The landscape, the culture, the town, the community. Is it the people who work there? Is it the head brewer? Is it the building you brought back to life, or the folk that drink with you in the tap room? Those poetry nights, those cook-ins, the bands that you feature. Try and think like a journalist. All of that is your compost. It is what the brand grows out of, and most breweries are sitting on a great big heap of it that nobody outside ever sees. One rule, don’t say: ‘we taste great’. You should never say that. You should never need to say that. You should show and not tell. That’s the key. If you need to tell people that your beer tastes great, it probably doesn’t.”

Enticement

Cooper also suggested that brewery owners should “imagine you’re at the bar next to a stranger (and try it later). And they’re going to give you a million pounds if you convince them to try a pint of your beer in a couple of minutes, and I think you would find if you even do that thought experiment yourself, what you would say would be very different. You wouldn’t say it’s got exceptional hop and malt accents… or some of the stuff that you write on social media or some of the stuff that’s on the website. You’d say something much more human. You’d say what gets you out of bed. You’d say our brewer learned for the best. You’d say we’ve got a Burton Union kit. Our running club just hit 5,000 miles. You’d talk about the inspiration behind the brewery, the founder stories, particular beers, particular combinations of ingredients, interesting hybrids”.

He added: “The secret is there is no secret, and you all know the answer already. Where the art comes in is later, but actually knowing what to say, we often find breweries and brewers already know what to say and yet are just not saying it. You can do it at a really, really small grassroots scale. Just be interesting, have stories like you already do, entertain people, and treat people, talk to them about your mates, talk to them about your family, talk to them about your friends, be authentic and human.”