Lagunitas is undergoing a brand refresh to bring more of a billboard effect to retail shelves and increase brand awareness across its portfolio. Although there have been tweaks here and there to designs over the years, this marks the first global packaging redesign for the brand.
The new designs will first roll out in California and Chicago in October with a focus on Lagunitas’ priority package, 12-pack IPA in glass, Lagunitas CMO Paige Guzman told Brewbound.
“Ideally, we’ll be in most markets in our priority packages by January 1,” she added. “That’s when we start changing the website, the POS [point of sale items], the swag, even icons around the brewery.”
Selling through most of the existing packaging will take around six months, just in time for the refreshed packaging to hit spring resets nationally in March, Guzman estimated. The refresh will eventually carry over to on-premise bars and restaurants and to the 48 countries where Lagunitas sells its beer.
The initiative was not led by Lagunitas’ parent company, Heineken, but one that came from within the Petaluma, California-based craft brewery. It is aimed at solving a lack of master brand visibility and inconsistency across formats and subbrands.
The goal is to “to increase quality perception, connect our branding and our connection to the master brand in an environment where the shelves are getting tinier and tinier,” Guzman said. “We need to make it a quicker gap for our consumers and for our retailers and distributors as all one master family.”
Although Lagunitas wasn’t lacking in consumer awareness for the overall brand, the brewery’s packaging “had become so disparate as our portfolio grew and grew and grew,” Guzman said. She reminded that founder Tony Magee developed the first labels himself at a Kinkos, and in the nearly 30 years since the brewery was founded, it has branched out into non-alcoholic offerings, hard tea, cannabis and higher ABV offerings.
After three decades, Lagunitas’ existing packaging had developed some negative consumer perceptions, including one person who likened it to Windows 95.
“As a marketer, that just hit like a knife in my heart and turned,” she said.
Lagunitas, like the overall craft beer segment, has struggled a bit this year, with off-premise brand family dollar sales -9.4%, to around $79.7 million, year-to-date in multi-outlet and convenience stores tracked by market research firm IRI.
Although off-premise scans offer only a portion of the sales puzzle, the company is coming off two straight years of overall volume declines. Lagunitas has seen its output decline from just over 1 million barrels to 950,000 barrels in 2020 and 900,000 barrels in 2021, according to the Brewers Association.
As such, Lagunitas sees an opportunity for a boost with the brand refresh — which the company has spent the last 18 months working through via extensive qualitative and quantitative research with consumers. The new designs also were vetted by the company’s distributor council, which pushed the company to be more consistent with its ABV across the packaging.
“Ultimately, when we saw the consumer results, and the improvement across quality perception and taste perception, the researcher said ‘These are some of the strongest scores I’ve ever seen in my career,’” Guzman said. “So it gave everybody the confidence that we’re not walking away from what makes us great. We’re just cleaning up and simplifying it so that it’s more navigable by consumers across a broader spectrum of taste profiles.
“I’m not just talking to the craft beer drinker today, we’re talking to the non-alc drinker with Hoppy [Refresher] and IPNA and beyond beer with Disorderly TeaHouse, so we need something that if you love drinking Hazy Wonder, we want you to look at Disorderly Tea and understand that it’s from the same company.”
The result is moving away from a disparate family of brands with many different colors, icons and a dog mascot that floated across the package to a single system of design across Lagunitas’ portfolio, Guzman said.
From Lagunitas’ surveys, consumers could better find the brand, they were more willing to buy Lagunitas with a significant increase in purchase intent, an increase in positive brand association and an increase in consumer recognition in accuracy.
As part of the refresh, the dog is now more prominent due to it being “such an iconic part of our brand and our legacy,” she added.
“In his current iteration, we got a lot of feedback that he came across as sad, and the last thing we want to be is sad dog beer,” Guzman said. “So we made a little bit of tweaks to him, and we also want him to really represent the playfulness. You know the line, ‘Dog is our copilot’? He should help consumers navigate through the portfolio.”
Possibly one of the most dramatic changes may be A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale getting away from its existing pinup girl imagery.
“Millie is not the most inclusive character,” Guzman admitted. “And so we needed to take a hard look at ourselves and say, ‘Is this where we want to write the next chapter of our brand?’ and we think having the dog being a consistent copilot for us is a better path forward.”
Meanwhile, the ABV, carbs, calories and sessionability of DayTime IPA are more prominently featured.
The design for the 19.2 oz. single-serve cans stay true to the new structure while also using the length of the cans, Guzman pointed out.
For Guzman, the refresh is about elevating the Lagunitas brand and also introducing new offerings to consumers who are either entering craft beer or are lapsed craft beer drinkers.
Enter Island Beats IPA.
New IPA on the Way
Island Beats IPA, in 6-pack cans and on draft, has begun shipping to wholesalers in California and will launch nationwide during fall resets in March 2023.
Guzman said the brand is a sessionable IPA at 5% ABV aimed at “younger and female consumers” who typically don’t like IPAs. In an effort to win over those consumers, Island Beats is a fruit-forward beer, which Guzman said is “one of the most unmet needs in our category,” without the bitterness of traditional IPAs.
Hoppy Refresher Goes into Cans
Non-alcoholic sparkling hop water brand Hoppy Refresher is entering the can packaging format, while also remaining in bottles.
Lagunitas is adding more flavors — Blood Orange and Berry Lemon — for a 12 oz. can variety pack, which will begin shipping in December to wholesalers in time to hit retailers for “Dry January,” as well as 16 oz. single-serve cans for the convenience store channel in March 2023.
Innovation Lab Set to Open in Q3
Lagunitas’ “innovation lab” is slated to open in the third quarter of this year, which will provide the company’s brewers “a playground to develop new products like Island Beats in a small pilot brewery before into that 80-barrel brewhouse behind it,” Guzman said.