@HeyBeerDan
  • WHO IS "HeyBeerDan?"
  • TITLE INDEX to all articles
  • CONTACT HeyBeerDan

With over 5,000 craft-beer breweries, how can a brand stand out? Ask Ballast Point.

12/20/2017

 
One of the ironic outcomes of Budweiser's Super Bowl ad mocking craft beers a few years ago was a spoof created and funded by a group of craft breweries. "Ironic" because in aiming to mock Budweiser's "Made the Hard Way" ad by showing the little guys' craft beer was unique and different, their video actually served up a near-perfect composite of what all craft beers share. In effect, they showed how craft beers are the same.

​Here's how craft beers are all alike, brought to you by the people who brew them...
In sameness, there is weakness

Like its big competitors, mega-brewer, Constellation Brands (Corona, Modelo Especial), opted to get into the craft-beer business by acquiring an already up-and-running small brewer. For a staggering $1 billion, Constellation got Ballast Point. The price included a host of standard craft-beer marketing assets: small, artisan brewery, well-regarded beers, interesting home town (San Diego), solid regional following, oddball brand names for its many beers (including EvenKeel Session, LongFin Lager, Fathom IPA, and the largest, Sculpin), a host of ingredients and recipes, and on and on. In other words, a lot of the same or similar stuff all the other craft beer brands also had going for them. The real challenge--made more urgent when Ballast Point's sales trend turned sour just after the purchase--was how to register distinctiveness in this sea of craft-beer  competitive sameness.

Choosing a strategy means eliminating many others

​There's a temptation that ensnares many a craft brewer, especially those who are new to marketing. These newbies are often so enamored of all that they do to make what they consider a special beer, that they try and tell their prospects the whole story. But as one old ad guy used to put it: "Telling' ain't sellin.'" The adage "less is more" was never better applied than in crafting marketing strategy.

Great marketers focus on uncovering the single key aspect of their product's distinctiveness that can win the greatest number of converts. Of course, no one such aspect will win over everyone, but diffusing the message to add multiple points of distinctiveness reduces, not increases, the odds of success. (See "less is more," above.) 
Picture
The Constellation marketing folks decided to claim an important beer-category benefit for Ballast Point, namely superior taste. But to achieve distinctiveness they chose to highlight a single, key product fact: Their Sculpin brand achieved a 97% rating from beer drinkers by way of Beer Advocate. The advertising folks then supplied real creativity to convey this point with a disarming bit of self-effacing, low-key selling: "We're not perfect, but close."

Simple. Straightforward. Distinctive. Effective. 

You can't ask much more from a selling strategy. Choosing among the literally hundreds of craft-beer brands cluttering retail shelves is daunting, even for the most geeky of beer geeks. Ballast Point just made the task easier for many of those beer shoppers, even as they made it more likely to result in more of those buyers choosing this new-to-Constellation brand. 

Craft-beer brands, take note: In an over-crowded category, smart marketing can be a competitive advantage.

Picture

Comments are closed.

    Subscribe to New-article updates from HeyBeerDan

    * Note: Certain video links may not function in emailed articles.
    Picture

    The Author

    Dan Fox is a real beer guy.

    For more than half his 30-year career at ad agency, Foote, Cone & Belding, he ran the Coors Brewing account. Leading a group of dozens of advertising professionals, Dan also personally wrote the Pete Coors "Somewhere near Golden, Colorado" commercials, designed the Coors NASCAR graphics, authored sales-convention speeches, and most important of all, formulated marketing strategy for virtually every Coors brand, including Coors Light, Keystone, Killian's Irish Red and more. His proudest achievement? "Our team had every Coors brand growing at once."

    Over his advertising career, Dan was personally involved in the analysis, planning and creation of thousands of ads for a variety of products and services. By way of this blog, he freely shares his expertise about what works, and what doesn't, when it comes to selling beer.

    If you're in the beer-marketing business--or just interested in the subject--you may want to read what "HeyBeerDan" has to say.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013

Proudly powered by Weebly