I just got the most recent Magic Hat Brewery newsletter. Overall, I think their newsletter design is pretty slick, and their promotions are pretty solid – centered around music mostly. They also celebrate their #9 Apricot beer on 9/9 every year. I can’t say that #9 is my favorite brew, but I know they sell a crap-load of it. If this is your most iconic SKU, wouldn’t you think that it would be alright to pump some marketing dollars into developing a unique giveaway? Apparently, the Vermont brewery doesn’t think so.

Magic Hat is giving away a #9 cruiser bike.

I know they don’t sell New Belgium up in Vermont yet, but the cruiser is absolutely New Belgium’s marketing territory. In fact, NBB is giving away a cruiser a day on their facebook page (which, as they reminded us about a hundred times last week, has past 100,000 fans – but that’s a different post altogether). To top it off, it looks like Magic Hat is giving away a single cruiser.

I wanted to check out their site to look into the details of this lackluster and uninspiring promotion, but their site is obscenely slow, and I have to apparently log in to even see what the promotion is. I’m not going to take 3 minutes to set up an account  just to see if this is a good or bad promotion. And I bet they’re missing out on a shit load of consumers who think the same way as me.

If I were doing this promotion, I’d drive consumers towards a social network that they already use, like Facebook. We’re all basically logged into Facebook all the time anyway, right? And I would come up with a unique giveaway that would build the #9 brand. In just a couple minutes, here are better giveaways I came up with:

• A year’s supply of apricots for 20 winners
• 10 tickets + airfare to the #9 9/9 event at the Brewery
• Help brew a batch of #9 and take 9 cases of #9 home
• A Magic Hat – some cool hat that you can put on your wall/car/fridge to show off your Magic Hat awesomeness

So these aren’t the greatest, but I came up with four on-brand giveaways in 2 minutes that would build the Magic Hat brand, not just copy another brewery’s most iconic swag item. So put that bong down, Magic Hat’s marketing department and hire some more creative people for your department.

Sarcasm. Hyperbole. Snark. Satire.

All of the above concepts are effective tools for promoting a craft beer brand. Craft beer marketing allows for brands to be edgy and provocative, and sarcasm, hyperbole, snark, and satire can make a craft brand stand out from the other 1500+ competitors in our industry. Being edgy can make a brand stick out amongst so much boring vanilla marketing out there. And trust me, there is a lot of terrible craft beer marketing.

This edginess can also bite you in the ass, if you take the wrong angle. I think that Avery Brewing Company’s recent blog entry about Mephistopheles Stout and the Gulf Coast oil spill is one of these lackluster attempts at satire. In a nutshell, their out-of-focus blog entry details how BP is asking Avery to donate $132 million in Mephistopheles Stout as the liquid to “top kill” the oil spill. There are a bunch of problems with this.

• Do you really want to pretend that BP actually asked you to do something, even if it’s in jest? BP is at the bottom of the barrel in terms of “companies that the entire world likes right now”. I would NEVER want to associate my company with one that is responsible for the “worst oil spill in American history“.

Satire can be really effective, funny and memorable. But only when it’s done well.

• The writing is much too wordy. Consumers aren’t generally reading long blog entries, watching long videos, etc. This is an instant-gratification world. Get to the point. And get to it quickly.

• What’s the point of this blog entry, even? I sort of get it – make fun of current events. But it’s nice to have a way to help, especially in the face of a really tragic disaster that is unfolding. More on this in a second.

• Haven’t the people at Avery ever seen a Black & Tan? Everyone knows that you can float a stout on top of a lighter-colored beer!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Avery’s beer. I’d say they’re in the top 10 in terms of quality, consistency and creative vision. In their beer. Their marketing is pretty awful across the board. And I get that they’re all about this “don’t do marketing” thing, but then why go ahead and write their blog entry? Either hire a competent marketing department or blow it off. Entirely. Half-assing it like this isn’t going to cut it, Avery.

I would have done it differently.

• Consumers find value in social action from craft beer companies. If I was writing about some sort of disaster happening, I would find a tangible way to help out. Even though Avery is a small brewery (<15,000BBL), they can donate some money to the relief efforts out there. Maybe they should have a Mephistopheles night at their tasting room, in which Avery could donate all profits to a relief organization working in the Gulf region. Here is a list of charities you could help out. I’m sure they would appreciate some of your money.

Plus people could come drink some beer at your brewery and have a good time, all the while helping charity. You win because people are sampling your beer, and the affected areas get some help.

• Find an angle that is actually funny/satirical. I would never satire a devastating oil spill, so I’m not really sure how I’d write about this. I’d probably not risk it, because there’s no reward here.

• If it’s not funny, don’t post it! Editing is important. Know when to self-edit, and run your idea past a few people. Make some edits, work on your voice, be consistent.

• Marketing is often a risk/reward scenario. What’s the potential reward about pretending you’re in cahoots with a horrible oil company? I can’t seem to find any.

Iron Chef Morimoto is going to open a restaurant in Napa, CA and it sounds like there’s going to be an on-site brewery there. Does this mean that craft beer is starting to gain traction among the really serious foodies as a viable (and awesome) alternative to wine and food pairings? I, for one, always thought that Dogfish Head (or Brooklyn, Avery or another high-class brewery with a huge portfolio) should try to sponsor Iron Chef for a season.

The problem with craft beer becoming a high-end item for high-end restaurants is that it adds an elitist element to craft beer. Especially in times when high-end wine seems to be tanking, does it makes sense to position craft beer as such a high-end item? We’re still in a recession, right? I guess it’s a positive that some of the most expensive craft beer is still very affordable, compared to premium wine.

What do you think? Is craft beer becoming too elitist for normal consumers?

I was working at my brewery’s table at the 2008 SAVOR festival when I overheard a neighboring brewery representative tell a consumer “well, this is good beer because it’s so high in alcohol.” This was a regional sales director at a pretty major brewery who was talking to a consumer, too. It’s something that has stuck in my head ever since. Is a beer good because it’s very high in alcohol content?

Enter Tactical Nuclear Penguin by Scotland’s BrewDog Brewery. Coming in at 32% ABV and costing 32£(!), it is grabbing considerable word-of-mouth buzz online these days. Look at recent tweets with “Tactical Nuclear Penguin” in them:

I’ll admit that I have some BrewDog cellaring right now, but do consumers think that is this beer good because it’s so high in alcohol, or because they expect it to be really tasty? There are a more and more very high-gravity beers coming out all the time. I’m sure consumers see more value in these higher ABV packages, but I thought that tasty Craft Beer is what sells. My head brewer once told me that balance is important when creating a great beer. I have trouble believing that such a huge beer could be very balanced (or even hide the alcohol burn of a 32% brew).

What do you think? Is super high-gravity beer just a gimmick to create marketing buzz or does it have a place on the shelves as an “ultra-ultra-ultra premium” style?

They say that alcohol is one of the four recession-proof industries, with the others being tobacco, pornography and lotteries. While I can’t speak for most of them (although it appears that tobacco doesn’t seem to be doing very well), Craft Beer appears to be weathering the recession pretty decently. Why is this?

Craft Beer packages have a wide variety of price points, from about $6 for a low-end 6-pack to $20+ for a 22oz or 750ml of specialty, small batch beer). Julia Herz of the Brewers Association told BusinessWeek today that Craft Beer grew 12.4% in 2009, whereas domestics and imports were down. Herz went on to explain:

Customers “want flavor, diversity, and choice,” Herz says. “That’s how craft has remained a high priority and an affordable luxury.”

I once thought people would transition away from the more expensive Craft Beer because of the economic downturn. Maybe not all the way to the macros, but to more affordable Craft Beer styles. But no.

Consumers appear to be looking for perceived value over lowest price point, which is helping breweries who have more aggressive portfolios of beer.

We’re hearing that 4-packs are the fastest growing package in Craft Beer. 4-pack beers have a higher ABV, more complex flavor profile and are more expensive beers (there’s also probably more margin built into the pricing on these big beers, too). The fact that this package size is growing so rapidly shows that consumers are identifying these as a better value than a 6-pack that costs less, as a 4-pack’s aggressive ABV packs more bang for its buck. I expect to see breweries pushing 4-packs to become a larger part of their product mix, and for newer, bolder, bigger beers to show up on shelves in 2010.

Of course this brings up the question of the ever-increasing ABV escalation, and I’ll talk about that in my next blog entry.

It’s “Doppelgänger Week” on Facebook; change your profile picture to someone famous (actor, musician, athlete, etc.) you have been told you look like. After you update your profile with your evil twin or switched at birth photo, then cut/paste this to your status.

If you’ve seen the TV show “Archer” recently, you’ll see that the main character looks a lot like Adam Avery, the CEO of Avery Brewing Company in Boulder, CO.

A majority of Craft Breweries are small companies with limited budgets. Often, these small companies invest very heavily only on projects that directly affect their beer production. Departments that are indirectly related to beer production (read: Marketing) are often either non-existent or incredibly limited. The rub is that delivering good customer service is a slippery slope, even for a Marketing department, but their experience can help handle tricky situations. If you do too good of a job, people come to expect that quick response time, and get restless if you take a longer time to get back to them. If you do a poor job, these potentially influential consumers may not give you the time of day when they don’t get a response.

The tone of your reply needs to be on-brand and consistent from customer to customer.

Photo of Cigar City Brewing, as shot by Flickr user nra45acp

Cigar City Brewing in Tampa, FL is regarded as one of the top up-and-coming small Craft Breweries. This week, Ratebeer.com rated Cigar City as the #3 brewer in the world. I read a tweet tonight that talks about their response to a customer inquiry, which led me to the email exchange between a consumer inquiring about beer availability and Cigar City’s harsh response (skim some of the subsequent follow up comments at BeerAdvocate, too).

I don’t feel that the brewery’s response was exactly the right one (obviously). But this one-on-one customer conversation had the ability to keep an existing happy customer happy, and this consumer would also probably have told his sphere of influence (beer friends online and offline) about his positive experience with a small brand making great beer. Instead, she shared a negative one with a huge influence, as this post has 5600+ page views at BeerAdvocate.com (at the time of this blog entry). [EDIT: (24 hours later, there are OVER 11,000 views now)]

We’ve all had bad days, sometimes while working very hard. But given the widespread usage of Twitter, bulletin boards, Facebook makes customer service tricky these days. Some breweries use attitude as a selling point in their brand identity, but I would imagine that few would protect their brand with a risky email like this. Sure, Cigar City is small, but given the responses on the BeerAdvocate post, most consumers see this as being pretty out-of-line.

So while it really is about the beer in this industry (as it should be), seemingly small emails can easily become very big problems.

A good way to make your brand visible is with a custom vinyl wrap on your company’s vehicle, especially if you run lots of events around your key markets. Where I worked, we wrapped various distributor trucks in our better performing markets to increase brand awareness. We also wrapped our company vehicle, a big RV, with some on-brand graphics (fluffy bottle shots, big logos, the whole shebang). The vinyl printing and application is a little pricey, but it definitely adds some weight to your sales and marketing promotions when you roll up in your pimped out company vehicle. Just take a look at this classy Oskar Blues Bus.

Western Beverage, the now closed Colorado Distributor, has a bevy of vehicles for sale. Choose from a selection of late-model vans to better promote your brand message.

Greetings and salutations, fellow Craft Beer enthusiasts!

CraftBeer.us is a new blog co-written by a couple marketing guys who have recently worked in the Craft Beer industry. Having been on the inside, we’ve seen lots of different marketing tactics, both great and terrible. Craft Beer companies have very limited marketing budgets, and there tends to be an emphasis on word-of-mouth marketing because of this.

We’ll be writing about all things craft beer, with an emphasis on the state of the industry as we see it. But we’ll highlight beer we think is exceptional, terrible, and all tastes in-between. Have something you want to tell us? Tweet us at @craftbeer.

Craft Beer is a competitive scene. There are over 1500 Craft Breweries. Those 1500+ companies are fighting for 5% of the national beer market (large Domestic breweries account for 75% of the national beer market, with Imports accounting for 20%). There is limited shelf space in liquor stores, and there is even more limited tap handle space in bars and restaurants. Marketers need to be innovative to stretch their budgets as far as they’ll go. They also need to be unique to stand out in a crowd of people all selling similar products.

The thing about the Craft Beer industry is that it’s also a brotherhood. It’s a classic case of “little guys versus the man” thinking. We see each other at festivals and hang out and get drunk afterwards. The camaraderie between those selling is genuine and different from any other industry I’ve been a part of. If we, as a community, can increase market share just 1% nationally, that’s a huge amount of money to go around. A large number of breweries are making high-quality brews, and that number increases every day.

My time in the industry taught me a lot about marketing. I think these lessons I’ve learned translate to a variety of industries that rely on word-of-mouth to generate increased brand awareness.