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.

Did I just see a Sam Adams commercial promoting the use of brown bottles? Yes, I did and here it is: (click here if not showing up in your reader)

I’ve been a big fan of the Sam Adams commercials ever since they dropped that awful campaign where Sam Adams was spying on conversations in bars in restaurants.  Jim Koch and has done a great job of promoting his brand and the Craft Beer segment in general by communicating their passion for beer.

But this might be pushing it.  Brown bottles?  The use of brown bottles doesn’t differentiate Sam Adams from any other Craft Beer brands.  Or most other beer brands in general!

The result? I think it undermines the other spots.  Consumers are smart and will say, “Brown bottles? So what?” and have less interest in the other commercials.

Jim – call your agency and pull this commercial ASAP.  There are too many other great things to say about your beer and brand before you have to resort this stuff.  And if you need ideas, contact us – we would be happy to help.

You may have seen the press release about Dogfish Head’s new reality television series on Discovery that’s currently in production. Aside from being a really incredible way to reach a mainstream national audience, this is a great way for DFH to showcase their brand authenticity.

Developing, building and maintaining a brand is hard work. One thing that makes things easier is if your brand story is authentic. There are many ways to show off this (probably-overused) buzzword, and Dogfish Head is taking a step towards solidifying their “off-centered” brand identity. We all know that DFH tries to push the envelope on new brews and almost-forgotten styles, all the while keeping quality at a high level. I see no reason that

Most anyone who has ever met DFH CEO Sam Calagione agrees that he’s a pretty great/inspiring/honest/classy person. I interviewed him for a Flying Dog video at the first SAVOR festival, and he was really nice and was happy to take a couple minutes to chat with me. I’ve definitely met brewers who wouldn’t give me the time of day, and even sat next to a certain brewery owner at a beer dinner who downright treated me like shit, although his wife was pretty nice (you’ll probably have to buy me a couple or 5 beers before I tell you who that was). I’m happy that Sam is such a nice guy, because I loathe douchebags in the beer industry. Actually, the only real negative I have against DFH is that I interviewed for a job with them, and after a 30 minute interview, I never heard from them again.

Most craft brewers send out an email newsletter.  Craftbeer.us subscribes to quite a few of them and reads some of them – but we’re wondering if we’re the only ones.  Please take our poll below and let us know if/how you use them.  We’ll report the results in a week.

I was in an unnamed city last night and went to a “open-mic-style” show that was sponsored by an unnamed craft brewer.  I have been to this show, which happens once a month a few times now and it’s been sponsored by the same craft brewer every time.  And unfortunately, executed the same way every time.

The Good:

• Complimentary beer with the $5 admission/donation.  Ok, good sampling opportunity.
• The brand was mentioned once during the show.  Nice plug.
• There was a banner.

Now, the Bad:

• All of the beer was served in the classic red “keg cup”.  No branding.
• When you walk up to the counter to get a beer, they ask if you want “light or dark”.  No style mentioned and I’m pretty sure that’s not how the brands are represented at retail.
• Needless to say, there wasn’t any description or conversation about the beer happening anywhere at the event.
• There was a banner – but it was in the back of the room (behind the audience) and on the other side of the room from where the beer was being served.

Craft brewers, or even marketing people in general, this is exactly how NOT to execute an event you sponsor.  No one had any idea of what they were drinking.  MAYBE they knew what brand.  MAYBE.  But if they did, they certainly didn’t know what style.  How can you expect someone to go buy your beer after trying it if they don’t know and remember the style?  The result was that everyone was just happy to have “beer” and no one cared what brand or style.

I acknowledge that many craft brewers don’t have the bandwidth or capacity to execute all of these events to perfection.  But instead of knowingly throw a couple keg to an event that won’t be executed – just don’t do it.  Save the money and go buy some consumers a beer at a bar where they will actually know who bought it for them and what they’re drinking.

Widmer is also in the small group of craft brewers who advertise on TV.  Widmer is pretty aggressive with advertising altogether.  Along with TV, they have been running Outdoor and Print for at least a few years now.

Here’s their most recent as.  A whopping 132 views on YouTube at the time of this blogpost.

Zane Lamprey likes to drink. A lot.

He had this HD show called Three Sheets (it’s a travel show about the World’s drinking customs) on the MOJO HD station until it shut down a while back and he’s been shopping it to various networks ever since. Zane posted on his website last week that the Travel Channel has picked up Three Sheets and will consider paying for Zane and his gang to film a 5th season if there’s high viewership on the re-runs.

As a token of thanks to them, Zane is calling on his many thousands of fans to buy a beer for everyone working at the Travel Channel. It’s a great way to have people make microdonations (starting at only $2.00) to the Travel Channel to show their thanks, and can be a powerful tool to get people to conversate about Three Sheets. The added bonus is that part of every donation will go to a charity.

How does this relate to craft beer marketing? Zane tapped the fantastic Maui Brewing Co. to be the beer supplier for this unique and fun promotion. I met Zane at GABF in 2008 and he’s a really wonderful guy, not to mention a very appealing advocate/spokesmodel for brands looking to expand. Maui now gets to be the center of attention for more than 36,000 fans of Zane on Facebook and 16,000+ followers on Twitter.

Here’s what Zane had to say about his partnership with Maui Brewing:

I met Garrett Marrero from Maui Brewing Co. when we shot the “Three Sheets: Hawaii” episode.  I became an immediate fan of their beers and their contributions to the craft beer scene.  Their CoCoNuT PorTer kicks ass!  I want to thank the fans for their continued support through the various networks that “Three Sheets” has been on, Maui Brewing Co. for helping me get great beer from Hawaii to Maryland, and to Travel Channel for putting the show on the network it’s belonged on from the beginning! Finally!  Cheers!

Another great thing about Zane is that he is in the middle of a national comedy tour. If you like to laugh and like to drink (who the fuck doesn’t like those things?), look for him coming to a town near you!

We always find it interesting when Craft Beer brands advertise on TV.  A few weeks back we mentioned that Blue Moon is running some TV ads.  Now, we’ve found that Bridgeport Brewing is running TV in Portland and Seattle.  It’s basically the same spot with different b-roll to localize it.

Here’s the Portland spot:

And here’s the Seattle spot:

TV is expensive.  We gotta wonder if a TV campaign is the right fit from an ROI and branding perspective.  ROI because sales will have to see a significant acceleration for the campaign to be justified.  Branding because no matter how you do TV, it always feels corporate and that’s exactly what craft beer shouldn’t be.

Of course, Bridgeport Brewing is owned by the Gambrinus Company, who used to have Corona’s distribution rights for half the country – and they have historically leaned toward mass marketing.  They also own Shiner and have had pretty good success with that – so maybe they know what they’re doing.

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We found this video ad for Great Divide beer on The Denver Egotist and it’s a little curious.

• Why would Great Divide produce a retro-style video ad?
• Why would Great Divide drop money on video?
• Why did they change the logo?
• Is it all in the name of kitsch?
• Why is the video posted under the Moonship Media YouTube account?

But then if you look a little closer, the comments on The Denver Egotist blog post say that Great Divide didn’t have anything to do with this.

• So did a local agency just do this for their reel?
• Did Great Divide have any creative input into it?
• Why does it have the Great Divide legal line?

What the hell is going on here?

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.