
Packaging World:
What is the most common mistake heritage beer brands make when they try to redesign their packaging to appeal to a younger audience?
Troy Wade:
One of the biggest mistakes they make is that they throw away all the heritage of the brand. They say, âOh this looks old-fashioned. Itâs dialing up all sorts of cues from the past. So letâs throw all those away, and letâs make this thing modern.â In fact, thereâs a classic example happening right under our noses, right this minute.
So Cobra Beer is an Indian beer [manufactured in the U.K. and India]. Theyâve been building a brand for about 20 years, and they built it on their Indian heritage and Indian provenance. And now clearly the client said something like, âWe want to appeal to a younger audience or to a newer generation, and we want something anyone in the world can access.â So theyâve completely thrown away everything theyâve built up over the last 20 years, and it lost all its Indian-ness, and now it just looks like a generic beer brand. So thatâs kind of what Iâm talking about. The idea is that theyâve thrown away all their provenance because theyâre trying to appeal to a young audience, and so theyâve become nothing.
I mean, now it even says Cobra World Beer, and itâs got a yellow diamond with a green square in it. It used to have Indian writing. It used to show, embossed on the bottle, palm trees and Indian iconography. They dialed up the parts of India that were quite romanticâbecause India can have some very non-romantic connotations. But they definitely played beautifully into the romantic aspects of the country.
One of the comments I made in a discussion on the new brand on LinkedIn was, âIâm South African, but I currently live in London, and Iâve traveled the world. But in order to say that Iâm a man of the world, does that mean that I have to give up the fact that Iâm from South Africa? Or can I be a South African whoâs got a global view?â Why does Cobra have to give up its Indian-ness in order to appeal to people who say that it belongs in the world? In fact, if anything, I donât trust when people move to another country, and then they give up their heritage. Iâm like, âWell, what happened? What went wrong? Why are you giving up where you came from? Why are you so ashamed of it? Why are you changing so radically? Whatâs wrong?â
So thatâs sort of the first problem I think, because you want to appeal to someone young that means that we canât be old, and actually, what we have learned about millennial consumers is that the term millennials is a huge, ambiguous label for an epic group of people that isnât quite as nondescript. We have learned that they are actually buying less, but they are buying higher quality, and theyâre looking for authenticity. So they want brands that have stories, they want brands that are paying attention to the environment and to social issues, and they want brands that stand for something thatâs been built up over time.
So, what happens when you throw away all your heritage thinking youâre appealing to a younger audience is that youâre actually turning the younger audience off, because they see you as unauthentic. They are wondering why youâre trying to be hip; theyâre wondering whatâs wrong with the product if you are radically changing the packaging to the point where itâs no longer recognizable. And, youâre not actually appealing to one of the core tenets of how they choose products and brands, which is that they like things with back stories and authenticity.
At Brown&co, we do a lot of work in beer, and often the point at which a client comes to us is when theyâve tried to do this and it failed. Then they come to us and say, âPlease help. How can we fix this?â And the first thing we always do is we say, âRight, weâre going to bring your history back.â
As a recent example, we worked with a brand in Turkey called EFES, which was the first beer in Turkey. They threw away all their heritage and provenance, and when we worked with them, we actually went back not just to the most recent pack that had heritage, which was about 2013, but we actually started with the 1965 pack. Because we thought the 1965 pack had even more heritage and even more provenance.
Why do you believe beer brands aimed at women have failed? What can mainstream beer brands do to appeal to women through package design?
One of the trends over the last 10 years or so has been that more and more women are drinking beer. So, of course all the big beer brands go, âOh great, women like beer, so letâs make a beer brand for women.â Theyâve done that, but I have yet to see a successful version. They try to make beer feminine. But what weâve learned is that women arenât drinking beer because they want it to be feminine, theyâre drinking it because they like the masculinity of beer. And, from a branding perspective, women who are choosing beer are choosing it because it blurs the gender stereotype, and it says something about their version of femininity.
The thing is though, not all versions of masculinity appeal to women. We did a big project with SABMiller, and what we learned was that there is a modern masculinity that women find appealing. Itâs a more open masculinity, itâs more friendly, less macho and aggressive. The mistake beer companies make is that they want to make a beer for women, so they make it look like a womenâs beer. The solution is to keep making beer masculine, but with the certain type of masculinity that appeals to women.
Do you have an example of a beer that was designed to appeal to women?
This particular one I will share with you was actually designed and packaged to look like champagne, and it came in a pink box. It was called Aurosa [brewed in the Czech Republic], and it failed miserably.
What are some of the mistakes youâve seen when heritage brands have redesigned their packaging to compete with craft beer?
Obviously the rise of craft beer was seen as a major threat to a lot of the big guys, who responded either by buying out some of the craft breweries and just absorbing them and turning them into their own brands, or by launching their own craft beer brand. Or, they turned an existing brand that wasnât doing terribly well into some kind of craft offering. A lot of the time those strategies have failed because when someone knows a major beer manufacturer has gotten their hands on something, and theyâre trying to make it look like something itâs not, itâs seen as inauthentic, and it lacks credibility.
The secret for corporate beer manufacturers and large-scale manufacturers to be successful is not to be something theyâre notâyou canât be a craft beer brand or manufacturer if you are a massive company, so donât try to be. Rather, play to your own strengths, which is that you know you can offer something that is consistent, you can offer great distribution, and your beer can be found everywhere. Itâs something consumers can keep going back to, and they know what theyâre going to getâthe quality is going to be the same whenever they drink it.
Most of the big beer brands actually started out as little craft beer brands way back when. And because they were so good, and because they were successful, many people bought them, and thatâs why they have made it large-scale now. Actually, most of the big beer manufacturers are where the little craft beer manufacturers want to be in a decade or two. Theyâre just a few steps ahead.
It also depends on how you define a craft beer. I have spoken with the heads of craft beer associations around the world, and some of the definitions of craft have to deal with size of manufacturer, so small quantities, small scale. But others donât talk about size, they talk about the quality of ingredients or the amount of care that goes into the manufacturing of something. So, in some definitions of craft, you could actually be a massive brewery but still be considered a craft brewer because of the quality of your beer.
One example is Pilsner Urquell, which is brewed in the Czech Republic and was the very first lager beer every manufactured. I went to the brewery about two months ago to have a look, and its beer is made in a very craft way still, even though theyâre brewing massive amounts of it. But itâs all brewed in one place, itâs made with single-source ingredients, and they donât allow others to just produce it around the world under license; every drop has to be made within the Czech Republic under their supervision. So again, you could argue that even though they are a massive producer, there is more craft involved there than with a small manufacturer that is allowing people all over the world to make their beer under license.
What are some of the mistakes craft beers make in their package design?
A lot of the craft beers these days just seem to be rooted in nothing. It just seems to be whatâs cool and whatâs hip and whatâs-the-next-out-there sort of beer-pack execution. But it doesnât really say anything about the beer itself or help me understand the brewer, or what the brewing process is like, or what makes it different or better. So five years down the line, I still am no closer to understanding anything more than I was five years ago. The art of brand building is to help people understand things better over time. If youâre just trying to be funky and hip all the time, and thatâs all you are, five years from now, youâre either still hip and funky, or youâre not, but no one has learned anything. You havenât built any stickiness into the strategy along the way.
For example, if I blocked off the name of one of those craft beers and said, âRight, who makes this?â Youâd probably go, âI donât actually know, itâs just the yellow can with that really cool graffiti writing on it.â In terms of brand building, it feels like itâs all about the execution and all about the look, but it doesnât feel like itâs anything more than that. You can be outdone by the next guy who comes in with the next coolest-looking can, and then your can isnât so cool anymore, and youâve got nothing else to fall back on.
Itâs like the old marketing principle about never building your brand on price. So if youâre the cheap one, all it takes is someone else to come in and sell something cheaper than you, and then suddenly you stand for nothing. Craft brewers should be playing to the intrinsics of the product itself and perhaps a philosophy: âWe stand for something different. We believe in something different. We approach this in a different way.â Build on foundations, build on rock instead of building on sand.
And that doesnât limit creativity. I call them âliberating constraintsââthey give you something to work from, which then at least gets your mind thinking in a certain way. And if youâre building on something, it can actually give you ideas and give you fodder, give you seeds from which to germinate thoughts. So rather than seeing it as something that limits you, I think itâs, âThe sky is the limit.â Often, you just donât know where to start, or you donât know where to go, or you donât know what youâre trying to achieve, so you kind of go nowhere. But craft beers need look at something a bit deeper: âWhat am I actually offering here thatâs different? What am I offering here thatâs better?â
If youâre a stout or a porter, and youâre rich and youâre dark, then maybe start with something that talks about the fact that youâre rich and youâre dark as a style. Or, if youâre a producer that stands for organic, or if youâre a producer that stands for non-alcohol, or for responsible drinking, or for anything, if youâre an overtly masculine brand, then something in what you do should always be about trying to help people understand thatâs what youâre about, and thatâs what you stand for. Because then, if there comes a time when you launch another beer, people will know you for something, and therefore, when you launch the new product, theyâll be more willing and more receptive to trying it because theyâll know the style theyâre going to get.
An example would be Apple as a brand. If Apple launched a car tomorrow, I think a lot of people might buy an Apple car, even though Apple has never built a car before, because theyâd say, âWell, Apple built it, and therefore itâs going to have a certain design ethic, itâs going to have a certain point of view, and I kind of know the kind of car Iâm going to get from Apple.â
If was just, hereâs a car and hereâs a telephone and hereâs a TV and hereâs a music player that didnât really have anything underpinning it all, you would just think, âAnother music player.â If they launched a car, youâd go, âWell, I donât know why I should buy this car because itâs just another car.â
Thatâs the problem a lot of craft brewers are making at the moment. Theyâre playing to all the trends, but theyâre not playing to any sort of truth underneath those trends. Thatâs what they need to be focusing on. As I said earlier, millennials and young audiences want that sense of authenticity and something underpinning the brand. They want to buy something beyond the product, and theyâre willing to spend more on it.
How do some craft beer brands grow big without losing their craft credentials, while others donât?
In the U.K., thereâs an excellent comparison you can make between Meantime Brewery and Brew Dog. They launched at roughly the same time about 10 years ago. Meantime is based in Greenwich, which is where the Greenwich meridian runs through, so thatâs why they sell the Meantime concept. BrewDog started in Scotland. Then SABMiller bought Meantime, and of course, in the minds of consumers, Meantime Brewing sold out from being a craft brewery and got bought out by one of the big guys, and they lost a lot of their credibility. You start seeing all the cost savings in packaging and things becoming more generic, and you can sort of see how theyâre trying to make it fit within a larger consortium of beer brands. They still make good beer, but theyâve become very muchâand they feel very muchâlike another mainstream beer.
Whereas BrewDog, they have never sold out. They actually started selling shares in their business to consumers so anyone could own BrewDog. They were innovative and they grew, and now BrewDog is sold in 60 or 70 countries around the world, and itâs still growing exponentially. And even though itâs sold in so many parts of the world now, beer lovers still consider it a craft beer brand and still think itâs kept its credibility and authenticity.
And I think thatâs the word: authenticity. I keep saying it, but I feel thatâs the way you grow. You grow in a way that feel authentic, you stand for something, and you donât ever bend your principles. Youâre not seen as giving up on your values and your principles or your beliefs in order to make money, which is what Meantime seemed to do. Whereas BrewDog was always very clear about what they stood for at the beginning, and they still seem to be living those values and have retained their authenticity. And thatâs how some craft brands have grown and remained authentic. Itâs about that sense of knowing who you are and not giving that up for anything.