Save the money (on a poorly executed sponsorship) 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.

I love this idea, and I’m sure there are some breweries out there doing this now, but why aren’t there more? By getting out and connecting with their consumers, they can create a unique experience for a few people each time. The costs and barriers to entry are relatively low (not many folks will turn down a free beer.) For casual beer drinkers who haven’t heard of the brewery or don’t feel like chatting with a random stranger, it will be a good introduction to the brand and in a low pressure environment.

However, breweries need to be careful in execution or else it will come across as a sales pitch. Too many bar goers are numb to brand reps or the ever-popular attractive woman at the bar secretly working for the vodka company. It has to be an honest, straight forward approach where the customer is not held hostage by the free drink while the salesperson makes his/her pitch. Instead, it should be understood that the customer can take the beer and choose to chat about it on their terms. Worst case, the brewery spends a few bucks on a beer, creates a little favorable exposure, and quickly parts ways with the customer. Best case, the brewery could create a new fan who talks about the free beer experience and the great chat they had with the brewery employee.

This strategy would probably fare better with newer, smaller breweries in and around their hometowns – the behemoths wouldn’t benefit as much. Additionally, smaller breweries could have their brew masters or founders out talking to the people. While it might be interesting to talk to Joe Schmoe from the marketing or sales department of one of the larger breweries, talking to the person who brews the beer at one of the smaller breweries would be a much more authentic interaction.

Have you ever had an interaction with a brewery rep (or any alcohol representative) at a bar, restaurant, or liquor store before? If so, tell me what it was like in the comments.

AC Golden is a brewery in Colorado with two primary offerings in the market now: Herman Joseph’s Private Reserve and Colorado Native – their newest offering made from ingredients sourced locally in Colorado. But who is behind the AC Golden brewery? A closer look reveals that they share an address with the Coors Brewing Company and that the ‘AC’ in AC Golden likely stands for Adolph Coors, the founder of the original brewery. They market these beers like craft beer (much in the same way their ‘Blue Moon Brewing Company’ markets Blue Moon) but they aren’t. They’re made on the same premises as Coors Light, Keystone, and other MillerCoors beers. Serious craft beer consumers won’t be duped by their efforts. First of all, no brewery makes their name so insignificant in their advertising. Looking at this sixpack, can you tell which brewery makes this?

Second, no craft brewery could ‘sneak’ onto the scene have their banner advertisements in bars across the metro area and their product in 600 area liquor stores. Within a month of its release, Colorado Native was ubiquitous on the Colorado beer scene. Real craft breweries have to grow slowly through a grass roots movement.

Being a craft brewery doesn’t just mean making flavorful beer. For all I know, this beer could be fantastic. But the ideal behind it means I won’t likely purchase it. Instead, I have a suggestion for the big boys who keep insisting on trying to get into the craft beer game: start a true craft brewery. Don’t create a craft beer look-a-like in megalithic proportions. It will not have the soul of a craft beer. Find your young, entrepreneurial employees who are willing to work hard enough. Give them a shoestring budget yet unconditional support for new ideas and pushing the envelope. Let them experiment. Have them serve in multiple roles across the new company. Let them negotiate for shelf space and tap handles at area bars. Have them learn how to run their new small scale bottling line. Allow them to hire employees and purchase more equipment when they’ve earned market share and developed a demand for their beer that they can no longer supply. Let them go through the trials and tribulations of starting a brewery, providing minimal guidance when necessary. Also, don’t try to hide the fact that a big brewery is behind it. AC Golden, The Blue Moon Brewing Company, and others make no mention of their true parent companies on their labels. It is dishonest and can breed contempt when people feel like they’ve been duped.

InBev (Anheuser Busch) and SAB (MillerCoors) are extremely innovative companies with many talented employees, and I’m sure this would be a dream job for many of them. From this pool of employees, I’m sure they could find a few who would thrive and succeed at running their own small scale breweries. Even though the final product will still be from one of the big breweries, it will have the soul akin to craft beer. If one of the big breweries took this approach, would you drink the beer?

While the effectiveness of television commercials can be debated, there is no doubt that some of the larger craft breweries have advertising budgets that could be spent on television commercials. But is there a need? The craft beer industry has always taken a grassroots approach and a DIY ethos to marketing themselves and growing their brands. Many of the most successful breweries have grown solely due to word of mouth and didn’t spend a dime advertising in their early years. Even though they may be spending money now on sponsorships or unique promotional events, it is not ingrained in many of these breweries to spend on traditional forms of advertising. And with the types of consumers craft beer attracts, who’s to say they would even respond to traditional television advertising?

Budweiser and Coors make a very mediocre product that they can market to the masses who want mediocrity. Television has traditionally been the route to reach these masses. Craft breweries turn out unique products that appeal to a much smaller (yet growing) segment of the market. As craft beers become more ubiquitous and market share grows, will we begin to see more craft breweries on air? Or will they stick to their off-kilter advertising approach? 

Despite the relative dearth of commercials in the craft brewing industry, one Canadian brewery has 100’s of commercials promoting its product – and they didn’t make a single one of them. Big Rock Brewery out of Calgary Alberta has been hosting its annual ‘Eddie Awards’ where amateur filmmakers are tasked with creating commercials promoting Big Rock Beer. The only catch? These commercials are never shown on TV – only at the festival. The awards ceremony, which was started in 1993, has grown to become one of the best parties in Canada. Amateur film makers write scripts, find the best shooting locations, and film the commercials. Some of them are what you’d expect from a bunch of amateur beer lovers while others are quite professional, but they all try to push the envelope in one way or another.

I personally love this idea. Big Rock has generated a huge buzz around this festival and the commercials are highly anticipated. And how much money has it cost Big Rock? Considerably less than a 30 second advertisement on the Super Bowl.

(note: if you’re interested in learning more about Big Rock Brewery and The Eddies, there is a documentary all about it.)

Yet despite the notoriety of these beers, the most popular import in America does not come from Europe. Instead, it is a light lager from our neighbors to the south. When you think of Mexican lagers, what comes to mind first? Chances are you’re thinking about a series of television ads with no dialogue that each offer their version of paradise (all with a Corona, of course.) Corona and a handful of other Mexican imports have dominated this space, and Corona is currently the #1 import beer in the United States. However, while they offer a product slightly different from the American domestics, they are generally low on flavor and complexity.

Despite the overwhelming popularity of this style, there haven’t been many attempts to enter this style of beer into the craft beer space, creating a unique opportunity for Denver’s Del Norte Brewing Company. Del Norte is a craft brewery whose focus is Mexican style lagers. Their beers offer a unique and higher end alternative to the simpler Mexican lagers consumers have become used to. Some may argue that Del Norte’s beers aren’t the most complex you’ll find in the craft beer space, but they offer a significant upgrade from the current Mexican lagers in the market. Their beers are great for converting Mexican beer lovers to craft beer lovers.

Del Norte has identified the most popular import beer style in America and has modified it to fit in the craft beer space. What other import categories are as of yet untapped?

 First off, let us state the obvious – beer is just a beverage made of barley, hops, yeast and water. To some it’s a thirst quencher; to others it’s a way to unwind after a long day at work. Sure, each of these uses holds a shred of importance to the individual, but why does beer matter? What has made it so ubiquitous worldwide? Why has beer become celebrated in cultures around the world? Perhaps it’s because beer acts as a window into a community. It allows a town, city, or region to tell a story about who they are in liquid form. This isn’t the case with all beers, but the most unique and imaginative beers begin to reveal their heritage after the first sip.

 

By the turn of the 21st century, the craft brewing scene had exploded; long gone were the days of mass commoditization and conglomeration. Craft beer was now commonplace, but in Santa Cruz, California, Alec Stefanski was doing something most uncommon. “It’s a brown ale brewed with pork!” Alec exclaimed emphatically. He is the founder of Uncommon Brewers, a new brewery that prides itself on doing things a little differently, and he had just gotten his first shipment of pork belly to brew his new bacon nut-brown ale. Santa Cruz is a city known for its independent spirit, alternative living, and its reputation as an international nexus of organic farming. Uncommon’s beers reflect Santa Cruz – they are unique, broad-minded beers flavored with an arsenal of bizarre ingredients including kaffir lime, poppies, anise, and candy cap mushrooms. The brewery is run by an offbeat staff that incorporates these ingredients into their 100% organic beers. Like so many other food and drink based businesses in Santa Cruz, Uncommon Brewers is grounded in the principles of the Slow Food movement, sourcing their ingredients from the farms in the surrounding region. To taste Uncommon is to taste the community of Santa Cruz, and if the essence of the city could be captured, it would be in one of Uncommon’s signature tall boy cans. But Santa Cruz is just one of the cities that can tell a story through its beer.

 

Garrett Marrerro was young and powerful; he was a recent college graduate making big money as an investment consultant. Like so many others, it seemed like Garrett was destined to spend his life working 9-5 for his paycheck. Unlike many others, Garrett took a bold step: he quit his job, moved to Maui, and opened a brewery. Many others have dreamed of leaving their unfulfilling jobs and moving to paradise. With sandy beaches, a tropical climate, and palm trees, Maui is, in effect, heaven on earth to the working stiff. It’s a laid back community that doesn’t take anything too seriously, and Maui Brewing Co. embodies that lifestyle and the Aloha spirit. This isn’t your typical Hawaiian beer that you drink at a ‘luau’ in line for the pineapple-glazed ham behind other tourists while a fire dancer bounces around on stage. Instead, Maui Brewing Co. produces truly local Hawaiian beer by sourcing many ingredients from the islands – CoConut Porter, anyone? Also, it is made by Hawaiians – Garrett prefers to train the local workforce as opposed to bringing in experienced mainland employees. Garrett explains: “It keeps more money on the island instead of sending ninety cents of every dollar to the mainland.” This is what Garrett refers to as ‘Brewing with Aloha’ – buying local first and supporting the community. His philosophy has led to Maui Brewing becoming the best selling locally produced beer on the islands. Garrett, like Alec and so many others, has created a product that goes beyond barley, hops, yeast, and water. He has helped mold a community identity, and has once again shown why beer matters.

 

Beer is a reflection of our communities; it has the capacity to convey societal values and ideas in an accessible and unpretentious manner. Think drinking a beer isn’t like tasting a community? Try one of Alec’s brews, and when you taste the organic ingredients of the Santa Cruz Valley, you’ll quickly reconsider. Open a can of Garrett’s CoCoNut Porter and try not to envision relaxing on Wailea Beach. Beer showcases our community bonds; it promotes our societies’ collective creativity and displays our penchant for and acceptance of new ideas. The art that is created at breweries across the world is every bit as important to their communities’ identities as Mozart was to Salzburg’s or Van Gogh to Amsterdam’s. Yet the art of beer is down-to-earth and genial. A simple trip to the pub can take the consumer from the beaches of Maui to the beer halls of Munich and any number of places in between. Beer matters because it acts as a cultural medium between communities, a common language in which to communicate the following:

 

‘We crafted this beer for your enjoyment, but also to let you know who we are. We crafted this beer, and it reflects the values, beliefs, and attitudes of our community. We crafted this beer from our land’s ingredients and through our people’s labor – both are contained within every bottle. We crafted this beer for you to know us, so drink up and enjoy. Cheers!’

The same can be said for the big or extreme beers. Once standard craft beer became more common place, these beers became the novelty, the outstanding, the exceptional. However, in the last few years more and more extreme beers have become available to the consumer.  What once seemed extreme may now seem pedestrian.

New start up breweries cannot rely on the formula used by the craft brewing pioneers or the extreme breweries that came after them. So what will the next formula for success be? It will likely be something very different. Equinox Brewing is taking the beer education approach. A friend of mine is exploring the idea of brewing exclusively for golf courses. What are some other experimental brewery models? Which experimental model will be the next to take off?

Surly’s new charitable efforts program was given the moniker ‘Surly Gives a Damn.’ What events or projects will comprise the ‘Surly Gives a Damn’ effort?

We just completed our first Surly Gives a Damn event last week. We had over 50 Surly volunteers help out a local food bank. We sorted food and put together different food boxes. I meet with our Surly Gives a Damn coordinator weekly to figure out what events we will be doing in the future. We are looking at volunteering for race events and a greenway clean-up projects. At the moment, we are spending a lot of time figuring out what types of volunteer events that are available for groups of 50 or more. Most volunteer group events are built for smaller groups.

Service projects seem to be very important to Surly.  How have these service projects not only benefitted the community, but also the brewery? Also, why get involved in these labor intensive type projects as opposed to just donating beer?

We do both items, donating beer and merchandise and the service projects. The beer donations is a bit of a no-brainer, everybody loves free beer, but I think the service projects are really a great way to connect with the community. I have always felt that breweries are very local, connected to the communities they are in. Even if we sell beer all over the country, we are still a Twin Cities brewery. I think the service projects are a great way to connect with our community that has supported us so well.

Which charitable organizations have you chosen to work with?

We have worked with a number of different organizations; theater organizations, sports leagues, city planning groups, food shelves , a Mississippi River group, children’s services, MN Zoo, Faith’s Lodge. The list is actually pretty long and diverse. We get so many requests for help, we try and spread it around.

How have you chosen which organizations to support?

Who to help is the most difficult part of the Surly Gives a Damn project. There is not enough beer and donations to go around, so we do have to choose which groups to help. In general, we look to help charitable groups and events as opposed to individuals requesting donations. Other than that, we really do try to spread out donations to as many different groups as we can.

Why is it important for Surly to be involved in its community?

We have been really fortunate at Surly to be so embraced by the Twin Cities community, it seems natural to give some of it back. I have never been a big volunteer guy myself, but the amount of energy that is in the Surly Nation is pretty awesome. I said at the food bank event last week that the 50 people working together that night did way more than 50 of us working as individuals. As a company, we can really make a great impact in the community by harnessing that energy that Surly Nation has. It was actually a Surly volunteer, Jon Jackson, that came up with this idea.

1. Recently you helped out with the Beer for Bikes fundraiser by donating your space and pouring some pints. Is donating your event space and beer a common charitable practice for Boulevard?

Boulevard Brewing has always felt it was important to give back the local communities that have been so supportive to the brewery over the last 20 years of business. It is rare we turn down a beer donation request from a 501c3 company. While our event space is typically rented out we are able to help organizations from time to time in that capacity.

2. Boulevard Brewing was a sponsor in the commissioning of the USS Missouri. I’m sure this was a one-of-a-kind opportunity for a brewery. How did you get involved in this and how has it helped Boulevard Brewing?

Boulevard Brewing was approached by the USS Missouri Commissioning Committee to be a sponsor. We were proud to join numerous Missouri-based businesses and organizations in supporting the commissioning of the USS Missouri (SSN-780).

For every barrel of beer sold in the state of Missouri between May 1st and July 31st Boulevard will contribute $1 towards the commissioning ceremony, which will be held on July 31st in Groton, Connecticut. All Boulevard brands and packages are included in this effort.

The primary reason for our sponsorship was to support the state in this historic commissioning. It is something that will not happen again in our lifetime. It also gives Boulevard the opportunity to expose new consumers to our beer who might not have tried it before but want to support our efforts. Our goal is to reach every Missourian with our message of home state pride and support for our troops.

3. As part of the commissioning deal, every sailor on the USS Missouri will be given a 12 pack of Boulevard Beer (what better way to support our troops?) How do you think the sailors react and has this helped your product’s standing amongst military personnel in general?

We will provide the crew members a 12-pack of Pilsner beer after the commissioning ceremony. While we haven’t heard their reaction yet, our guess is that they won’t turn down free beer.

Boulevard has been thanked by numerous individuals –both military and civilian– for stepping up with our USS Missouri sponsorship.

4. Boulevard seems to have a connection to the bicycle – from the Boulevard sponsored bike team to the Boulevard Cup cyclocross race. Why is it important to Boulevard to promote bicycle usage?

One of my biggest passions is conserving our world. Anything that promotes a greener lifestyle, such as biking, deserves Boulevard’s support.

5. Aside from the organizations listed above, what other organizations have been the primary beneficiaries of Boulevard’s generosity?

Boulevard supports so many organizations every year it would be difficult for me to list them all out. We truly try to donate to any 501c3 when we have the capacity to do so. We’ve given beer and employee support to events such as Jazzoo that supports the Kansas City Zoo, the American Cancer Society, the Kansas City Repertory Theater, the Kemper Museum and the Urban Culture Project, just to name a few.

7. Why are charitable donations and community involvement important to Boulevard Brewing?

Without the strong and sustained support of its hometown, Boulevard Brewing Company would not be where it is today. As a token of its appreciation, the brewery gives generously to the Greater Kansas City community through year-round donations of beer to non-profit groups and charitable organizations.

Thanks again to John and everyone else at Boulevard Brewing. Visit their website here.

Your largest event is the Harrisburg Brewers Fest, a beer festival with many other breweries pouring samples. What was the inspiration behind this event and who all has it benefited in the past?

We were approached by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation of Central PA (CFF) about seven years ago to help with organizing a beer festival. For the first year, a lot of time was spent educating CFF on the beer festival concept that Tröegs felt could be grown and turned into a destination-type event. Initially CFF had visions of 10,000 attendees, beer trucks with 20 taps out the side, and a multi-day event. After many meeting hours the group determined that a craft beer festival that featured reps from the individual breweries would set the tone for an event that could Tröegs grow over time, attracting more people and more breweries.

The Harrisburg Brewers Fest is held the third weekend in June every year. The inaugural fest drew about 28 breweries and 1500 attendees – a complete sell-out. Since that time we have expanded to two sessions. In 2009 we had 44 breweries participate and more than 3500 attendees. Both sessions sell out a few weeks prior to the event.

How have the other breweries responded to this event?

Since Tröegs started selling beer in 1997 we have been very active in attending beer festivals. When it was time to recruit breweries it was relatively easy to get 20-25 breweries. The brewery world is pretty small, and everyone pretty much knows each other. If you actively recruit breweries and treat them well, they will spread to word to other breweries about the festival.

As we have grown the fest it takes a little more work for get 50 breweries to attend, but our event has a reputation for taking care of the breweries. We offer a stipend for beer, we offer complimentary hotel rooms, and we provide lots of volunteers to make the rep’s job as easy as possible.

Central Pennsylvania is not exactly a craft beer mecca. But if a brewery sells beer in this region or in close proximity of this region they want to be at the Harrisburg Brewers Fest.

Are these mostly regional breweries or breweries from all over the country?

The event started as a Mid-Atlantic regional event, but as more breweries have expanded into this market, they want to be at this event. In 2009 I think we had breweries from 11 states, but the vast majority of breweries represented travel less than four hours to be at the event.

How does the cost/revenue structure of this event work? Tickets cost $40 a piece – what percentage of the ticket sales goes to charity? Are the other breweries donating all of the beer they pour or are they receiving a cut of the ticket prices?

All proceeds go to CFF. The Harrisburg Brewers Fest has grossed more than $100,000 each year since it was started. Expenses each year come to about $30,000, so it’s not cheap to put on this event. But CFF has netted more than $500,000 in the six years since the inception of the Harrisburg Brewers Fest.

How have you approached and convinced the other breweries to participate in this festival?

Treat them right. Brewery reps never forget the nightmare festivals. If you pay for beer, offer a complimentary hotel room and run an organized festival you don’t have to “convince” breweries to attend.

Has Tröegs recognized any benefits as a result of hosting the festival?

In the beer industry, the Harrisburg Brewers Fest is known as “The Tröegs Fest” and there is a lot goodwill associated with that. On a personal level there’s a great feeling of satisfaction in helping people suffering from a horrible disease – even if I am awake for 22 hours every year on the third Saturday in June.

Thanks again to Ed from Tröegs. Make sure you check out their website here.