Brewbound Podcast: When to Refresh, Rebrand or Stand Pat with CODO Design’s Isaac Arthur

[00:00:00] Justin Kendall: Heading to CBC? Kick things off the day before at Brewbound's meetup at Love City Brewing in Philly, Sunday, April 19th from 5 to 7 p.m. Connect with beer industry leaders, grab a drink, and catch up with the Brewbound team. It's free to attend and walking distance from the convention center. Head to Brewbound.com slash lovecity.rsvp. And don't forget to catch the Brewbound team at booth 956 during CBC. Next on the Brewbound podcast rebrands, refreshes and when to stand back. Hello and welcome to the Brewbound podcast. I'm Justin Kendall. I'm Jessica Infante.

[00:00:49] Zoe Licata: And I'm Zoe Licata.

[00:00:51] Justin Kendall: And we are officially through Labor Day. The summer selling season is, I guess, over. Although we've got some college football going on, we've got the NFL starting, and we're not really into fall yet. So maybe things won't totally... Maybe it's the football selling season.

[00:01:12] Jessica Infante: Yeah.

[00:01:13] Justin Kendall: Yeah. Maybe that's what we need to call it. How was all of you all's Labor Day?

[00:01:20] Jessica Infante: Mine was fine. I did not follow you guys' advice. I did make the French onion bites for the neighborhood party. I saw that. They were delicious and they were gone in like five minutes. Nice. So very popular. So we're on the beach on Saturday and there's a big crowd, you know, a few yards away from where we were sitting and the crowd is growing and like people are standing around in a circle and like there's chanting and there's cheering. And we were just there. I don't know what this is. This wasn't people that like I know. But then later that night, I was, you know, up on the beach for a bonfire with my friends. And some women wandered over and joined us. And they apparently they were in that circle. And they told us all about it. It was tall boy roulette. where people all conspired to each bring a different tall can of something. And everybody, you know, in the large group who would reach in blindly and grab one. And then you had to drink it within, I don't know, an hour. There was like a set time, but it was really random. So the women that joined us were like, somebody had gotten an IPA. She was not happy about it. The other person had gotten what I assume is a mango modelo gelato. I tried to ask questions, but also it was like midnight. And also, I don't know these people and didn't want to get real into it. But I was just like, so do you remember what like the can said? And then I was like, this is not that we make friends, Jessica, please knock it off. But it sounded really fun.

[00:02:47] Justin Kendall: And now I wish I had gone over. That does not sound fun at all. Like as far as participating in that, there isn't Anyway, on this earth, you could get me to participate in that.

[00:03:04] Jessica Infante: I mean, it didn't sound like there were any like hard and fast rules about what was in the pile. So you could have pulled out. Who knows? I'm sure somebody got like a Coors Light and somebody got a Twisted Tea.

[00:03:16] Justin Kendall: Yeah. But then you get like Tropic Force or Fruit Force or Juice Force. You could. Nine plus.

[00:03:24] Jessica Infante: I tried asking about the can sizes and these chicks were like, we don't know. I was like, what is this, 16 ounces? You're like 24, 25. They were like, what are you, like a fan scientist?

[00:03:37] Zoe Licata: Kind of. That is a lot riskier than like a nip roulette or something. You can't just like get rid of that real quick.

[00:03:46] Jessica Infante: You're stuck with it. Yeah. And I guess like some people don't finish and dump it out, but they get shamed.

[00:03:53] Justin Kendall: I mean, what's the timeline like? Did they say like an hour, maybe an hour? OK, so you're not just chugging it? No. And then do you have to go back and get another?

[00:04:07] Jessica Infante: That I don't know. They said they were 50 altogether and there were no duplicates. No duplicates.

[00:04:15] Justin Kendall: It's a lot of work. No duplicates. You just cleaned out like the front of a door, right? Like, yeah, the front facing.

[00:04:23] Jessica Infante: So there's a fun little party idea for your next soiree. I like it.

[00:04:28] Justin Kendall: I'll get right on that. How about you, Zoe? Are you going to be rouletting me?

[00:04:33] Zoe Licata: We did not have any roulette or anything going on.

[00:04:37] Justin Kendall: We could get you a box flavor wall and you can roulette from there, right?

[00:04:42] Zoe Licata: I was trying to explain to when we made our liquor stop before our total wine stop before the party on Saturday to Lawrence what beatbox was doing with their flavor walls. Just has like a little end cap at total wine right now. And he was very confused. I don't think I explained it very well, but. No, we had a great time. Cornhole went well. I had a great partner, shout out to Max, who definitely is not listening. We won three games. We lost two in that as well. But it was better than last year. How were the children of the Cornhole? They were much stricter with the children this year, which the children did not like, but all the adults liked. So that went a lot better.

[00:05:27] Justin Kendall: How about you kids?

[00:05:30] Zoe Licata: Well, they made all of the neighbors who are participating basically sign an agreement saying that you have to be like 18 or older to participate. Or if you're younger than 18, you have to have like a parent either playing with you or you acknowledge that like people are not going to go easy on your child. There.

[00:05:50] Justin Kendall: That kind of made it official this year. It's not dodgeball, so they'll make it out alive.

[00:05:57] Zoe Licata: Yes, they just get very emotional. They have to learn how to lose. Little people, big feelings. Yeah. What was also different this year is that one of the neighbor's kids is a sophomore or junior in college now in a fraternity. So all of him and his friends were partying and participating this year. So I got to see what they were drinking, some true Gen Zers. They really liked the Suncruisers. There was a lot of Suncruisers.

[00:06:30] Jessica Infante: Interesting.

[00:06:32] Zoe Licata: And mimosas. That's interesting. Yeah. The frat bros were really into the mimosas. Like, were they mixing their own? No, they had.

[00:06:42] Jessica Infante: Were they doing RTD?

[00:06:44] Zoe Licata: Someone had bought, like, you know, when you got like a beer tower, a margarita tower or something from a restaurant, someone had bought one of those and basically pre-mixed mimosas and was refilling it throughout the day. And so they were drinking from that.

[00:06:59] Jessica Infante: I have a friend who studied abroad in France and she said over there, they call those things les giraffes.

[00:07:05] Zoe Licata: Like a giraffe. I love that. Isn't that cute? Right? That's adorable.

[00:07:11] Justin Kendall: So are we buying stock in Suncruiser at this point? No. I don't want stock at the rest of the company. Just in general, like stock up, stock down.

[00:07:20] Zoe Licata: I don't know. Based on the history of innovation there, I might not risk it, but. Yeah, people are freaking loving Suncruiser. And it's everywhere. And I'm seeing it pop up on a lot of restaurant menus around here now too. It's like taking over.

[00:07:37] Justin Kendall: Oh, this is firsthand experience.

[00:07:40] Zoe Licata: This is yeah, just personal accounts from a place that is a very definitely like core market for this thing.

[00:07:46] Jessica Infante: I saw a ton of Suncruiser stuff around New Jersey, like POS at bars and liquor stores. And I know they had a big sampling promo push because One of my buddies was like, oh, like our team is down there if you want to go see them. But I can't, I'm a mom, I can't just run out to a hard tea sampling.

[00:08:04] Justin Kendall: You've got 19 two ounce roulette to do.

[00:08:07] Jessica Infante: I know, that's the other thing. But Surfside was still the dominant thing in people's hands, despite the heavy presence of Suncruiser merchandising.

[00:08:20] Zoe Licata: I also went to a Red Sox game on Thursday and noticed that there is now a very large surfside billboard right outside of Fenway, which is pretty interesting because we know Boston Beer basically like unofficially owns the alcohol market inside of Fenway Park.

[00:08:42] Justin Kendall: Also very officially. Yeah. So is Suncruiser in Fenway? Have they gotten it in Fenway?

[00:08:50] Zoe Licata: I believe it's at the bar at the Truly Bar, Truly Roof Deck, something. Yeah, that like whole Boston Beer branded bar that they have over by where like the TV commenters are and stuff.

[00:09:05] Jessica Infante: They have, I believe they have cans along with everything else. The last time I was at a game, which is a long time ago now, the Truly Deck was the site of like the Marblehead High School prom. Which I'm sure must have been very cool for those kids, but it was kind of wild to be like sitting in the bleachers and like looking over me like, those are a bunch of prom dresses. That's hilarious. Yeah.

[00:09:28] Zoe Licata: Yeah. I was drinking Bells, Oberon, and Sam Summer. No Suncruisers for me.

[00:09:36] Justin Kendall: So something to keep an eye on too. Well, we were talking about Fenway and this is totally off subject, but 2025 is the year that that partnership goes through. So we're coming up on that re-upping or not re-upping. So I guess we'll see.

[00:09:53] Zoe Licata: Are they going to rebrand us the Suncruiser deck? I mean.

[00:09:57] Jessica Infante: Or the Twisted Tea deck. Yeah. I think that's more likely, but I assume they'll keep that.

[00:10:03] Justin Kendall: I think if they can, they will. Yeah.

[00:10:05] Zoe Licata: It's a really good spot. And I mean, it basically just shouts their name across the entire park.

[00:10:12] Jessica Infante: Not to get too inside baseball on this baseball deal, but when it was up for discussion, the options were to sponsor the Red Sox or to sponsor Zach Brown's tour. And a lot of us were very much like, we should do the tour. That makes more sense. It goes all over the country. You know, just trying to think of like better ways to, you know, leverage your partnerships and activate wholesalers. But that was really dumb. The Red Sox was the right choice. Yeah. It's also a really good deal. Yeah. So, I mean, I wonder if they'll give them the same price or if I assume it will go up. It'll go up.

[00:10:54] Zoe Licata: It'll probably go up, but I don't know about too much. It's not like there's the Red Sox have too much to hold over there. heads right now of viewership or anything.

[00:11:04] Jessica Infante: That's also true. The Red Sox organization offered to break the right field Budweiser sign into like 1,400 pieces so that everybody at Boston Beer could have one. And Jim Cook said no. He said it was uncouth to do such a thing.

[00:11:20] Zoe Licata: Wow.

[00:11:22] Jessica Infante: Classy guy.

[00:11:22] Zoe Licata: Fenway was just trying to pull a Mean Girls one and they want to include everybody.

[00:11:30] Justin Kendall: Anyway, we should get into some of the business of this episode and stay tuned. We have an interview coming up with Kodo Designs, Isaac Arthur. He's going to talk about rebrands, refreshes, when you probably shouldn't touch something and a lot more and Jess was leading the discussion there.

[00:11:50] Jessica Infante: I love when we chat with Isaac. I think he is so smart and he has such great insights on branding and looks at things that a lot of people don't. So really great conversation. I'm really excited for everybody to hear it.

[00:12:01] Justin Kendall: Also got to plug our happy hour at the NBWA annual convention in San Diego. It's actually before the convention officially kicks off with their party. So come pregame with us September 29th. That's a Sunday from four to 6 p.m. at the Lost Abbey's church location. Free drinks, free apps. And like I said last week, probably the best church you'll go to during the NBWA's annual convention. Also, we've got Brewbound Live coming up December 11th and 12th. I cannot believe it's coming up this fast. It's in Marina Del Rey, California. We just announced a whole host of new speakers. We have Rebecca Mizell from Gulf Distributing. She is also going to be the MBWA chair, so excited to have her. On that panel, we'll also have Lauren Dahl-Sheeter from Dahl Distributing here in my neck of the woods of Iowa, Jennifer Grant from Markstein Sales in California. And then we've added a couple of marketing heavy hitters. We've got Zach Francis from Beatbox Beverages and Rebecca Dai-Yanasunis from New Belgium Brewing. So going to get a couple of different perspectives there. Very much looking forward to that. We've got a whole host of other speakers that we We've already announced you can check that out at Brewbound.com. Get your tickets now.

[00:13:28] Jessica Infante: That's quite a crew of speakers. I'm very excited for us and the audience.

[00:13:34] Justin Kendall: Yeah.

[00:13:35] Zoe Licata: And we're like, what, three months away now?

[00:13:38] SPEAKER_??: Yeah.

[00:13:39] Zoe Licata: That's so close.

[00:13:41] Justin Kendall: Still a lot of speakers to announce. It will be here before we know it, but it will be awesome as always. So let's get into the news. And I guess we can touch on it very briefly since it's already come and gone, but the numerator data and what the BI was saying, as far as Labor Day goes, it was going to be very beer centric.

[00:14:04] Jessica Infante: Yeah, Numerator, which is like a consumer data firm, called out that of the people who were planning to buy alcoholic beverages for their Labor Day celebrations, 76% of those people were going to buy beer. which is a lot. And beer also really over indexes with Latino and Latina shoppers. 87% of them said they were going to buy beer for Labor Day compared to that, you know, 76% of the general population of survey respondents. Alcoholic beverages in general over indexed in the Northeast. So, you know, Zoe and I and our elk were doing our part. compared to the West, which was interesting to me. And they didn't specify where out West. So I don't know if they mean the Western half of the country or the West coast or whatever, but people in the Northeast, 63% of them said they plan to buy alcoholic beverages in general. And in the Western half was under 50%. It was about 46%. So interesting.

[00:15:01] Justin Kendall: Yeah. So the third largest beer drinking holiday of the year, as you probably already said,

[00:15:07] Jessica Infante: Yeah, the Beer Institute had called out the fact that last year in 2023 Labor Day was the third largest week of the year for beer. So that tracks, you know, after Memorial Day and 4th of July. They also found that compared to an average week in 2023 Labor Day of last year, beer volume sales increased 26% over an average. So pretty good. We'll see if that was the case with this year in a couple of weeks.

[00:15:34] Justin Kendall: And the other piece of data that we got just as the holiday was getting into full swing was the National Beer Wholesalers Association's Beer Purchasers Index for August. And this is like a forward looking indicator of purchase intent by wholesalers, a reading below 50 means contraction, a reading above means expansion. And what we found here is the August reading was 40. And that is a trend that has held in the post pandemic world in August. So each August post pandemic has been in the 40s, and that's something Lester Jones, the NBWA's chief economist, and he has another fancy title that I can't remember off the top of my head.

[00:16:23] Jessica Infante: BP of analytics?

[00:16:25] Justin Kendall: Yes, that. He's pointed out that this shows that wholesalers are being more cautious as the end of summer comes, and he's been in my texts, and he said, this is something that had to happen. You know, the past three years have all seen a big shift in August. And the post-pandemic August is not the pre-pandemic. And it could be a number of factors. It could be too hot or more people on vacation away from home or a combination of many things. And he said, quote, a cautious approach is the right approach for this fall. So there you have it. Not total doom and gloom there. It just means they're keeping those inventories where they need them and they're not overstocking things. And that's not such a great thing sometimes for a segment like Craft, which is in a bit of a spiral in these projections with a reading of 23. It was 12 points lower than August, 2023. Right.

[00:17:25] Zoe Licata: That's like the real comparison is like how it is versus last year, because we expect everything to be kind of low as it gets into fall. But 12 points below 2023 is that's more than just a slight change in what's happening in the market. That's a craft is feeling this pretty heavy.

[00:17:46] Justin Kendall: Yeah, that's pretty rough. Anyway, you can read all of these stories at brewbama.com. Become a Brewbound insider to get everything. We've said it before, we pack these daily newsletters for our insiders. If you're getting the non-subscriber version, you're not getting the full picture.

[00:18:08] Jessica Infante: And if you are an insider, I think we would all kind of love a little bit of feedback. So if you want to drop us a note at news at brewband.com, it would be really cool to know how you feel about like the length of the newsletter, what we're including, what's working for you, what's not. I'm super curious. So that would be really appreciated.

[00:18:27] Justin Kendall: Yeah. We love feedback on this and we make adjustments. We listen. Anyway, let's get to our featured interview with Isaac Arthur from Kodo Design.

[00:18:40] Jessica Infante: A well-done redesign can revive its tired brand and reignite consumer interest. But if done poorly, changing a beloved brand can alienate longtime fans and attract attention for all the wrong reasons. How can you ensure your brewery takes the former route and not the latter? Here to break down his recent think piece, how to de-risk your brewery's rebrand, is Isaac Arthur, co-founder and CMO of Kodo Design. Isaac, how are you?

[00:19:05] Isaac Arthur: Great, Jess. Thanks for having me on today.

[00:19:07] Jessica Infante: Joe, thanks for chatting with us. I always love our conversations, because it's fun to nerd out on all this stuff with somebody who really understands it.

[00:19:14] Isaac Arthur: I agree. I always enjoy these conversations too.

[00:19:17] Jessica Infante: Let's kick off with a quick refresher on the difference between a rebrand and a refresh, because I know we tend to use those words interchangeably, but they're not really the same.

[00:19:27] Isaac Arthur: Yeah, this can be kind of a semantic thing and we actually probably use them interchangeably more than we should as well. I think that if you followed any of our writing, we boil it down to the idea of evolution versus revolution. I think that's a good way of framing it. Most people understand that. So a rebrand. really represents a shift in your core messaging. It starts with upstream business and brand strategy considerations. So long-term vision, what spaces do we want to compete in? How is our brewery position? How do we want to be perceived? What are our most compelling and key differentiators, brand values, messaging pillars, on and on and on. All that strategy, once developed, drives the look and feel of your brand identity. So in your identity, just for another definition here, In case people don't understand is, you know, your logo system, your packaging, your, your website, all the, all the kind of tangible surface level stuff. A refresh is really more of a visual surface level update. So we call it a fresh coat of paint. And in this scenario for this to work well, your brand strategy, all that positioning and messaging stuff we just talked about in this scenario. That's all in a good place. It all works well, but you know, you're just, your package is getting a little long in the teeth, your identity is. So we generally, in this case, build on or evolve your existing identity. So not a sweeping change, like a rebrand, but more of an evolution. And I also think there's, there's another level here of a package refresh, which, you know, as you can probably gather is really just focusing on packaging alone. So new packaging adorned with your current logo, current identity system. We actually have a series coming out on that on the newsletter here. Actually, by the time this goes out, I think it will have launched. So the package refresh series, so stay tuned for more on that.

[00:21:05] Jessica Infante: Oh, look at us. So timely.

[00:21:06] Justin Kendall: Yeah, I like it. So if I'm a brand out there and I'm on the choose your own adventure of refresh or rebrand, when do I know that it's the right time to do one or the other?

[00:21:18] Isaac Arthur: It's really tough. There's a deeper question there. about kind of when it makes sense to do this in the first place. And I'll try to thread this needle of which path makes the most sense. I think that we'll work with a brewery that is, you know, making 30,000 barrels a year. We'll work with a brewery that produces 3,000 barrels a year. And we actually see a lot of similar issues, a different scale, obviously, but still kind of similar problems. And these run the gamut from like annoying surface level pain points to deeper existential, I won't say crises, but issues. So like on the annoying side of the spectrum, And again, we see this all across our work. It's inconsistent packaging. It's like the number one thing people come to us to figure out. So your flagships don't look alike, but then, you know, it's exacerbated by a nonstop march of one-off releases or other extensions. You have had something else we're dealing with a lot now. You've had different agencies or different kind of staff come through your brewery and they've all left and everyone's kind of, you can kind of see the strata of like, oh, you know, Sarah made like those things and that agency made these things. So kind of unwinding that. There's a desire to bring a consistent look and experience to multiple locations. Again, format shifts. So getting from bottles to cans or 12 ounce to 16 or vice versa, introducing variety packs is a big one. And I think also we're seeing today kind of big shifts in competitive sets, driving a lot of rebrands. So like that's creating a lot of interesting opportunities. On the more existential side, before I forget, We were on a call with a brewery. We're gearing up to rebrand them here in a couple of weeks, or kick that off rather in a few weeks. And they're about 10 years old. They make around 10,000 barrels. So they're doing well, but they still, they kind of done well in spite of themselves. Like they don't know what their story is. So we hear that idea. We don't know what our story is. Some version of that is very, very common to hear. And then just a few others just to round us out, because I think they're kind of timely. We're seeing a lot of M&A and brand architecture driven rebrands right now. So. Certainly if you're buying another brewery or another brand, there's usually some stuff that needs to happen with that brand to get it up to snuff, or you're gearing up to launch a fourth category product, RTD, hard cider, hot water, whatever. And I think you're trying to figure out how you can leverage your brand identity into that space. And then you realize like, oh, our brand identity is so hot. So you got to kind of figure that out. flat to declining sales. We see that a lot. I think that's something that's facing a lot of breweries or a lot of breweries are facing rather in the industry. I did want to point out that not in free fall. I think that if your, if your sales are in free fall year over year, over year, over year, over year, you know, I would be hesitant is even, even, you know, someone was sitting down with me to ask what to do. I don't know that a rebrand might be the first lever I'd pull there. I'd probably other things to work at. And then it's just time. We hear that a lot too these days. That's an interesting one that we're kind of exploring and writing about more these days. You know, our packaging hasn't been updated in 10 years or even like our packaging hasn't been updated in three years. And it's just, we feel like we're getting lost in the shelf. So those are a lot of the reasons we're hearing right now for why breweries are rebranding.

[00:24:17] Jessica Infante: You just said something that's really interesting to me. As I've mentioned on our pod before, I spent a long time in the marketing department of a large national craft brand. And I lived through a bunch of packaging redesigns. And we've also had days where people from marketing agencies or like marketing education companies would come in and speak to us. And we've heard, you should always change your packaging. You should never change your packaging and everything in between. So like the conventional wisdom is super confusing. Like, How do you know, like you just said, like for some people it's just time, but for some people they say never change anything ever. Are there some brands for whom the it's just time excuse makes more sense? And are there some brands for whom the never touch anything also makes sense?

[00:24:59] Isaac Arthur: Our position here is actively changing, setting aside the perverse incentive of a branding firm saying that you need to just be continually, you know, like, yeah, no, every two years you need to redo everything.

[00:25:09] Jessica Infante: I feel like I remember the creative director's face just absolutely falling upon hearing that.

[00:25:13] Isaac Arthur: Yeah, it's great for some people in the equation. Where I think we are right now is that a proper rebrand handled once, and that doesn't have to be now if you already have that squared away, but that done once and really good to go. followed by four to five-ish year package refreshes to stay top of mind. We've only got one or two evolutions of this, so I don't have any data to back it up. But I think that's kind of what we're hearing and what we're seeing right now. And we're hearing specifically from our clients, CMOs of these larger breweries, that a package refresh is a good way of staying top of mind and getting people to look at you. Now, I think that usually needs to work in conjunction with other things, you know, not launching new products for the sake of launching new products, but something more noteworthy than just, look, we have new cans, you know, like there's something else to get people excited. But I think that's what we're seeing today. And I think that, yeah, I mean, if you had asked me that question eight or nine years ago, we would have said you really shouldn't touch anything unless it's not working. I mean, you just let it go and let it ride, you know, kind of the old David Ogilvy idea of just, if a campaign is working, if something's working, let it rip for 30 years, you know, let it become iconic. But I don't know that that really works today in CPG packaging. I don't think that you can let it sit for that long. I was going to ask, is anything ever too iconic to touch? Yes. And you'll, you'll kind of know it when you see it. I couldn't imagine a scenario where rebranding Sierra Nevada, you know, didn't pull through a really important visual equity that they've got. And there's, I mean, there's just stuff that really is sacrosanct to this process. And it's a brewery by brewery case. And I think that the longer something has been around, the more likely it is to be worthy of retaining. That doesn't mean you have to, you know, you don't have to be handcuffed to your equity, assuming it doesn't serve you moving forward, but. Yeah, you have to be really careful updating that and evolving that.

[00:27:05] Justin Kendall: And you bring up a great point, though, about the balance that you have to walk in these things of retaining your existing consumer while also trying to appeal to the next generation or those who haven't found your brand yet. And I think that that's an interesting tightrope walk that you have to do as somebody who comes in and works on these brands.

[00:27:31] Isaac Arthur: It's a through line for a lot of our, especially legacy brewery, but, but even, I mean, breweries that are 10 years old, we're hearing this idea of, of courting lapsed fans and then also getting younger drinkers. I mean, it's literally like every project I can think of for anyone that's over. Seven or eight years old that we've handled the last year or two are trying to navigate that. And it, it is tough. It's having your cake and eating it too, because it's, it's a really hard balance to get. I think that you need to, our job kind of what we can inform through the process is. we need to make something that honors what was there and what was working before to some degree. This can be, you know, more apparent for a brewery that's 20 years old. You know, you talk about equity and sacrosanct stuff, and is there anything that we know we can't touch? But we often find important elements for a brewery that's three years old too. I mean, there's usually stuff that's, you don't have to be 30 years old to have equity and important assets of your identity. So I think that taking stock really hard, working to take stock of what equity exists and what's important. And then what can we really build your brand around? And then jettisoning the rest, maybe not being as precious about it is at least a starting point. I don't think there's a one and done silver bullet for getting your current fans excited and then also attracting a 22 year old kid. I mean, if there were a silver bullet like that, I think everyone in the industry would be using that strategy. So are we at a point where nostalgia can be an effective part of a refresh? It certainly can, and I think it has to be. I mean, depending on how old you are. Nostalgia is, there's a reason it's so prevalent and just branding and CPG in general. I mean, it makes you feel warm and fuzzy and nostalgia means different things for everyone, you know, like. seeing these kinds of brands from our childhood come back as we're like kind of coming up on 40 and having our own kids, like that hits us differently than does, you know, something we were in, like music we were into when we were in high school or college or whatever. So I think the nostalgia is really important. I think that there's also a risk of hanging your hat too much on just kind of being old. You know, like this idea of like, oh, we're a 30 year old brewery, so you should drink our beer. I think more breweries need to think about what they're actually selling people. And what I mean by that is we think, oh, well, we're selling hazy IPAs to people that like hazy IPAs. But no, when you're selling something, I think you've probably heard the old quote about people don't buy a drill bit, they buy a hole. They're buying an outcome or they're buying a thing. And so when you're selling beer, you're selling what that beer allows someone to say about themselves. And that can be like a story they tell themselves, or that can be a thing that they like, literally like an outcome. So I want to be viewed as outdoorsy. So I bring this beer to the canoe trip that I'm taking and my friends know that I'm outdoorsy or whatever. I mean, there's a, this is super soft and it's, it's more kind of behavioral economic stuff that I'm certainly not qualified to talk about, but I think that that's an important thing to think about here. Nostalgia is important and can be a really valuable element to your brewery's brand identity, so long as it works in conjunction with other important differentiators. And also that it resonates with whomever it is you're trying to reach. If you're trying to reach a 22 year old, maybe this also won't work. I don't know. You know, I'm not 22. I never will be again. So I don't know that I can speak to it, but yeah, it's an interesting thing to try to figure out.

[00:30:45] Jessica Infante: I think Miller Lite did throwback packaging for an anniversary, God, like maybe 10 years ago. And it just went over so well that they kept it. And that's what they have right now and have for 10 years. And, you know, my inner 22 year old really misses that, like that, like bright, slightly offensive to the eye blue stuff that they had going on in like the mid to late aughts. Cause you know, that's what we were drinking back then. But yeah, I mean, look at that. Like that worked so well that they kept it. And there's a whole host of other things that have gone on with Miller Lite since then. But I do want to get back to like the common threads that exist between successful redesigns. When you look at all the work that Kodo has done for various clients and you've had redesigns that have been successful, what do they all have in common?

[00:31:31] Isaac Arthur: I already spoke to one idea and that is that you honor, and that's maybe too dramatic a word, but whatever equity that exists, you update that in a way that really makes it logically make sense for the brand. So I think that it's important to evolve, again, whatever's working and then whatever's not working, you get rid of. But I think that what we see a lot, and I'll try not to go on too big of a tangent here, but a design firm will come in and they'll want to put their stamp on a project. Like, I want everyone to know that we worked on this, but you know, we don't really matter here. What matters is the brewery's brand. And it's like, we should be invisible kind of behind the scenes. And so I think that kind of honoring all the work that that brewery has put in for however many years and making sure that everything is appropriate and beautiful and compelling, I think that's an important part. So that's one, a few others. I think just something that energizes your team, you know, getting people excited to rep the brand, make great beer, sell great beer. I think that there's huge value in that hard to measure, but huge. I think that leaving the branding process similarly hard to measure here. But your entire team kind of understanding what makes your brewery special, that stores, all that strategy work that we work through, making sure that trickles down to everyone in the business. So everyone on your team ownership down to like a front of house person understands the story. This is a selfish behind the scenes one, but at the risk of sounding too earnest, you know, like for us as an agency, as a small business, we like happy clients and repeat business. I think like working with Kettle House back in 18 or 19, and we're still working with them. I mean, as we speak, we're gearing up for more work. Cody and I drove across the country in 2013 to present branding concepts to Derek and Blake at Fernson Brewing, again, their living room on tabloid sheets of paper, sharing that with them, and launched their first packaging in 14 or 15, and just last year now, so 10 years later, we did a significant brand architecture and package refresh with them. So I think that's really rewarding to kind of see that. But maybe most importantly, and the one I probably should have led with is just any rebrand needs to drive sales. All the fuzzy stuff I just talked about is nice. We don't discount qualitative metrics in our work, but we are helping businesses sell more beer. So really if a rebrand doesn't result in an increase in sales, something's gone awry, something's gone horribly awry.

[00:33:37] Jessica Infante: Well, so speaking of kettle house, you guys have done some great work for them that you really helped them create like a unified billboard almost. I don't know if that's the right word here, but you've created a way for them to have the same look and feel across all their cans in that it's still identifiably kettle house, but each beer can have its own identity. How important is it to do that? Because I think redoing all your cans at once probably seems daunting.

[00:34:03] Isaac Arthur: Yeah. Assuming that you can control how your products are retail. I don't know that you can, or merchandise maybe. This really depends more on your brand architecture and portfolio goals. And I'll apologize here. I'm going to use a bunch of jargon. It's not hard jargon, but go for it. In the case of Kettle House, like if you're building more of a branded house, meaning you want all your packaging to obviously hang together and clearly be from your brewery, from your parent brand, then that's a good move. you know, whether you do it all at the same time or you stagger it, you know, doing it all to look the same, makes a lot of sense. If you're building more sub-brands, which is a strategy we're seeing more often these days. So you're spinning as an example, like a brand family around your best-selling IPA, you've got a light lager play, you've got a fruit sour in the mix, you know, it's like more varied. Then hanging together or billboarding maybe isn't as important because you're not telling like more of a monolithic story. I don't know how we can measure this, but I think that the biggest brands and CPG obviously value this idea. And this isn't apples to apples for craft, but I mean, go into any grocery store and look at how ABI billboards. It's just, it's remarkable, like Florida ceiling Budweiser. It's actually really cool to see, or go to the soda aisle and look at how Pepsi and Coke dominate, you know, 30 feet, just like acres of diabetes. And it just like, it turns, you know, like every day, or I imagine probably every 48 hours, all that stuff's gone and all of this replaced. So I think there's something really powerful about beating people over the head. So every time they step into like on the idea specifically, Jess, of billboarding on shelf, you're obviously hanging together on shelf, but what you're doing is you're giving someone an impression, an impression, an impression, impression every time they see it. And eventually the goal anyway. is that you would become the default brand in their mind. I mean, I think that's all the effort we're putting into brand building adds up to that. But I think that's kind of one benefit of really hanging together on shelf.

[00:35:50] Jessica Infante: In your recent issue of the Beer Branding Trends newsletter, you mentioned that brewers need to have a clearly defined brand strategy before doing anything else. What process do you recommend to get there?

[00:36:01] Isaac Arthur: We start by clearly defining what problems and opportunities you're trying to address. So before we kick off any sort of refresh, we want to understand, I mean, it's literally the first question I ask anyone after, you know, we talk about the weather or whatever, you know, like small talk shit. We got to get out of the way in front of a call. It's like, why are we here? Like, why are you talking to us right now? Why are you talking to Kodo? And really, I mean, what pain points are you dealing with that make you think this is the right move right now? What market forces? competitive set changes, internal shifts, you know, like leadership shakeups or stuff like that. Again, why is right now the time to invest your time and energy and capital into this, whatever this engagement is? On the flip side, I think it's, what exciting opportunities do you see? It's like, you know, what do you want to achieve that again, you think that a rebrand will help you do? So rebranding will, as I already kind of mentioned, it'll help you address a variety of pain points, but Our project work kind of more often these days revolves around helping breweries maintain momentum. So it's not, I think rebranding, I think this is kind of going away, but it still kind of has a, maybe depending on who you ask, like a negative stigma, you hear, Oh, they rebranded and you go, Oh. You know, I wonder what's wrong. Did they get, especially in this space, like, did they get acquired or whatever? But I think our work with like Noda Brewing is a recent example. I don't know if you guys saw that on, saw, I think it was on Brewbound. You probably saw it, but a good example where they were doing really well and they refreshed their packaging and their identity to kind of maintain that and keep the momentum going. So. We were talking about brand strategy, so let me actually answer your question now. Once you understand, once we understand what we're trying to achieve through this work, then we begin, the brand strategy process is just us hashing out and framing your strategy. So that includes things like your positioning key differentiators. Your brand voice and personality, your audience, key communication pillars, your story, your essence, your brand architecture. If I could clearly define brand strategy as succinctly as I can, I think it's really about how you will achieve and maintain long-term differentiation in the marketplace. And this is, you can see we're coming at this from a branding and design perspective, but this is also, I mean, this is like. slash business strategy. I think it's really how, how will our brewery maintain relevancy and differentiation long-term. So once we get through that, we work through, you know, how it looks and feels, how we take these ideas and move into the real world through your packaging and identity. But that's probably starting to blur the lines between strategy and art direction. So I'll just say that it's important to get all this upstream strategy work squared away long before you ever put pencil to paper and like touch up, you know, start sketching on identity or packaging. I mean, cause otherwise it just won't It won't be cohesive or tell a clear story.

[00:38:40] Jessica Infante: So, I mean, your case for a staggered rebrand launch is pretty strong, as you laid out in the recent newsletter. But how do distributors feel about this? And could different packaging on shelves at the same time result in consumer confusion?

[00:38:51] Isaac Arthur: In the several times that we have launched or helped our clients launch a staggered rebrand, we have not heard a distributor complain about it. I'm sure they have behind the scenes, but we were just not privy to it. We do make sure to engage our distributors pretty early on in the process of stakeholders. So I think that we gain their opinion, but also their buy-in. So that might be part of it. But a rebrand launch doesn't work in a vacuum. I think it's probably self-explanatory, but I want to define a staggered rebrand launch. I mean, just in case. That'd be great. A staggered rebrand launch just means that you are going to have your old or your current packaging out in the market at the same time as you're rolling out your new stuff. So there's going to be a period of overlap. Depends on how long it is, but this is by design. It's really by necessity more than anything, because having a clean changeover today is, I won't say impossible, but very hard. Even for smaller breweries, it's challenging because the biggest linchpin here is almost always your packaging. And that's kind of two fronts. You're working through dead stock. You know, if you got three truckloads of painted cans, you can't just throw those away. You know, that's money sitting there. So you got to work through that, but then also working backwards. Let's say we are getting new decorated cans. Well, that might be six or eight months. So managing all those timelines is challenging. Wrapping delivery vehicles. If you're doing that tap handles don't just, you know, materialize overnight. There are a lot of moving parts, obviously. So. The staggered rebrand launch from our perspective, or at least how we try to get our clients to think through it, isn't really as a negative or a compromise, but view it as an opportunity. So I think we've kind of jokingly called it prolonging the magic in the newsletter. But the idea is to continually stay top of mind. And every time you launch a new package or you get closer to getting that thing out the door, kind of in totality, you're celebrating it. You have a release party, send out your press releases, do all that stuff. So every step you take, towards having everything out the door is really a chance to celebrate. And it really turns like what could be a negative into a positive. Now, what I was saying a minute ago, part of your question, Jess, was about could this confuse fans? And that's a valid concern, that certainly can happen. But what I was gonna say is that a rebrand launch doesn't work in a vacuum. While you are rolling out your new look, there's a long communication plan that happens ahead of this and kind of contiguously with it. So you're announcing internally amongst your team and your partners, so retailers, wholesalers. You're working through how and when you're telling your fans. And then I think usually just functionally that centers around like some sort of campaign, a drip campaign on social, like a formal ad campaign, if you're big enough. But, but again, you're, you're constantly messaging around it and taking your fans along for the ride the whole time. And we think it can be a really a good way and effective way of doing it. I mean, whether you do it by choice or by necessity, and we think it's, it's something that could be done well.

[00:41:33] Jessica Infante: We touched on the Fat Tire rebrand, and I think we may have danced around Anker, but I do want to make sure we talk about this. Arguably the most maybe infamous craft beer rebrand in the past couple of years, and you had some tough love in your newsletter. You called Anker's rebrand catastrophic, and the replacement packaging was abysmally designed. But you know what you're talking about and you call it like you see it. So, you know, we're now in a world where Anker almost died and it's been almost about to be resurrected by its new owner, you know, Hamdi Ulukaya. What advice would you give him about this, how this historic brand should look if and when it reappears? Because this is like a huge opportunity for the Anker brand to come back.

[00:42:15] Isaac Arthur: It is. Did I actually use the word abysmal? It didn't sound like something I'd say.

[00:42:19] Jessica Infante: No, I mean, it was abysmally designed.

[00:42:23] Isaac Arthur: Well, and here's the thing. Cody and I are careful about publicly critiquing anyone else's work. You know, we've, we've been there. We've spent a year of our lives working on something to have it pushed out in the public and then get roasted. Like it hurts not to sound like a baby, but you know, you take your lumps. And so number one, we weren't the man in the arena. We didn't want to critique it. But then two, like we also love Anchor. So we didn't want to, you know, like shit all over this, this brand that we love. I mean, one of my early, one of probably your guys is probably many listeners. One of your earliest craft beer experiences would be Anchor. So, but yeah, I mean, just setting all that aside, the work was just really poorly executed. Let's imagine a world in which jettisoning all of their equity actually did make sense. Like, again, I don't think that was the right call, but I wasn't in the room. Let's pretend like that did make sense. Even if that was the right call, the design work that they landed on was objectively not great. I mean, the typography wasn't well done. You could argue sour grapes because we didn't do the work, but you know, like the anchor, probably the most important aspect of the entire identity was not well rendered. The colors were garish. I think there's a script typeface. on an arched baseline, which makes me really angry. That's a me problem. That's something I need to work on, but.

[00:43:35] Jessica Infante: Well, like to my eye, it's giving Twisted Tea, which is a fine product, but you don't want to rip off somebody else's color scheme.

[00:43:43] Isaac Arthur: And we, when we do competitive set audits, when you're at that national level, you do need to look at other national brands. If we were rebranding a small brewery in BFE, you know, Nebraska or wherever, kind of like Twisted Tea might not be a big deal, but when you're sitting in a C-store set close to Twisted, yeah, I mean, that matters. I mean, it's a big deal. So had Anchor reached out to us, I don't think we would have recommended a rebrand and probably not even a refresh. I know why they did. I think we've said this a few times, but like we got to do something and a rebrand is an easy lever to throw. But before we would have suggested anything like that. Maybe not the move, but a move. And this is the conversation we've had with some of our legacy clients. So, I mean, it's like, can we just cut our losses and rein this back in and try to be available in a few select markets, if not just San Francisco itself, build some mystique around it. So if steam beer were only available in San Francisco, that's actually kind of interesting. I don't think it's a luxury aspect, but there's like a, there's a scarcity nudge there. Maybe that could be built around. So, so I would start there, you know, I get nice and tiny. I try to make anchor like this regional darling. And I think that's a position that you can build from. And then I don't know, maybe subtly refresh your packaging here and there. I think something else they could have done is lean into building sub-brands around their pillars. So Steam, maybe Steam becomes the brand, maybe I think Porter and Christmas Sale, probably one or two others that I'm forgetting. But do all that, let that ride a few years and then then kind of see, like, does it make sense to expand again? Maybe we just stay in California. Maybe we go a little north or a little south, but I don't know where. I can't talk about it yet. I have to be vague, but we're rebranding an iconic New England brewery right now. So kind of in your guys' backyards. And we've had a lot of interesting conversations with our team around the optics of a new owner coming in and just like changing things up after the acquisition. So I think the longer your brand is an older brewery, an older brand now, the longer you've been around. the more equity and goodwill that you will have built up over time, the more careful, I think I've said this a few times already, but the more careful you need to be about honoring that and carrying that forward, because otherwise it just looks like anchor, you know, like big name conglomerate buys the beloved thing, slaps the shiny label on it, people get upset. We're handling a lot of M&A work right now. So on the branding and brand architecture side. So I just want to say that to anyone out there listening who is considering buying a brewery or another brand or taproom or whatever, you do need to be careful and remember that there are fans in the mix here. You know, sometimes people that have been around, like in the case of our client here, decades, uh, been, been drinking along. So they're watching what you do. And, uh, this doesn't mean. again, that you have to be handcuffed to a particular look and feel if it no longer suits your business. But you do need to be very careful about this transition because the worst case, worst, worst case is you alienate those longtime folks. You fail to recruit new people and you're just, it's kind of a disaster. So I don't know. I feel, I feel compelled to shoot my shot here for Hamdi if he's listening. Hey, Hamdi, hey. Reach out to Kodo, we would love to help you right this wrong and restore Anchor back to its former glory.

[00:46:46] Justin Kendall: So yeah, kododesign.com, Hamdi.

[00:46:58] Isaac Arthur: I think so. Hamdi, you can pay us to just put your old label back on the can, you know, but yeah, I mean, it would probably center around that. And I am, I'm excited just as a fan to see what they do and how they come to market. And I'm curious if they will relaunch, you know, nationally or, or if they will reel it in, but curious to see what they're thinking. I think we're all curious to see what they're thinking.

[00:47:22] Jessica Infante: For sure. Isaac, you guys drop so much knowledge in your newsletter. How can our listeners also get in on that?

[00:47:29] Isaac Arthur: Well, thank you. Yeah. Head to beerbrandingtrends.com. We try to send it twice a month when we're able to do that. So that's our goal. It's a Beer Branding Trends newsletter, beerbrandingtrends.com. And really about 9,500 subscribers currently. This explores beer branding and portfolio strategy, brand architecture. If you're into beer and beer branding and selling beer, making beer, anything like that, I'm very proud of it personally. So I think that you should check that out. We also have a podcast. I think people that are listening to this show might be interested in podcasts, so you can find Beer Branding Trends wherever you get your podcasts, and you can listen to riveting conversations between Cody and myself on beer branding and marketing. But yeah, BeerBrandingTrends.com is probably the best bet. Perfect.

[00:48:11] Jessica Infante: Well, I think this is always a delight. So good to see you virtually. Hopefully we can have a beer in person together one of these days soon-ish before CBC, maybe, I don't know.

[00:48:19] Isaac Arthur: Yeah, in Indy, that's right.

[00:48:21] Jessica Infante: Yes, we're coming to your town. Thank you for everything. Always love talking to you. Fascinating insights. I love nerding out on marketing. Justin, thank you for co-piloting this convo with me. Thank you so much to Zoe for all she does. To Joe for all the cuts he's gonna have to make to this. And to all of you for listening. Hope you enjoyed. We'll be back in your feeds with another new episode next week. Don't forget to like, rate and review the Rebound Podcast wherever you listen to the podcast and we will catch you next week.