The Startup Dialogues: Branding (Monday Night Brewing, Atlanta, GA)

Note: This is the first in a series called ‘The Startup Dialogues’ which will focus on a different aspect of starting a brewery in each post. For my first interview, I talked with Jonathan from Monday Night Brewing – an Atlanta-based craft brewery in planning with the mantra ‘Weekends Are Overrated.’ We discussed branding, labeling, and packaging.

When you were initially thinking about the concept, how forward thinking were you? Were you looking for something to show your friends or envisioning your bottles in stores across the country? Or somewhere in between?

When we first started planning a brewery, we were definitely thinking long-term. As we developed the brand over the next 2 years, we considered where people would have contact with our brand as a startup brewery and designed around that. We wouldn’t have money for commercials or billboards or print ads. Taps, bottles and six pack carriers would be our primary means of “marketing” so the brand had to work in those arenas, and had to be distinctive in context (versus other beers on the shelf or other taps at the bar).

What efforts did you take to create your brand?

A lot of brainstorming. Many a night was spent arguing with Jeff and Joel over beer names. As the Marketing Guy and Master of Mind Control, I had the most at stake, so I would think about our brand constantly. While falling asleep or showering. I also dabble in design, so I created the initial designs.

What efforts have you taken to develop your brand?

We’ve concentrated most of our resources on growing our brand presence on the web pre-launch, simply because we don’t have a lot of resources. We also view the actual brewing on Monday nights as an integral piece of our “brand experience.” It’s not like we have MONDAY NIGHT plastered up everywhere, but there’s a general vibe of camaraderie, transparency, meeting new people, and relaxing after a day’s work. We did a complete logo redesign about a year and a half in, which was emotionally exhausting.

What went into developing the name for the brewery?

The name was actually the easiest for us because it was grounded in who we are and what we are about. We started brewing every Monday night. Hence, Monday Night Brewing.

Did you have other ideas for the name? If so, how did you test the various names?

Nope. Monday Night was one of the first names we considered and there was a general consensus that it fit. My mom actually suggested “3 J’s Brewing” because all three owners have names starting with J. But I think Three Floyds would have put a hit out against us.

How did you develop concepts/ideas for logo and label design?

We knew we wanted our logo to stand out. And on labels we wanted our logo to be big, which meant it had to be changeable depending on the beer. Initially we started with a monk as our logo because monks brew beer and we were born out of a bible study. Which made sense at the time. But we realized that what we were really about was weeknights. Monday Night was where it was at, and there was no discernible connection between monks and Mondays in our logo. So we decided to change it to make our entire logo (and name) more weeknight-centric.

We spent a lot of time brainstorming new directions and whining to friends, but couldn’t land on anything that felt right. From there we crowdsourced our logo to get new ideas from a lot of designers. There was one that stood out in terms of idea, but needed some help in execution, so we paid them for their work and took it from there ourselves.

Once we had a logo in place, the labels, taps and 6 pack carriers pretty much designed themselves. They came together in my head and all I had to do was spend hours in Adobe Illustrator bringing them to life. We also ran our designs past consumers on our blog and a few people in the industry and made revisions throughout the process.

Did you hire an outside design firm?

We did not. We did crowdsource ideas for the new logo. The final execution is actually a silhouette of Joel, our Operations Guy. We had a little photo shoot at Joel’s house one Saturday to get the outline right, and then edited it ourselves. In terms of direction for the crowdsourcing, we were looking for diversity of ideas, so our primary direction was explaining our brand… We’re a witty, white-collar, Southern cosmopolitan beer brand, and our logo needed to reflect that.

How did you decide on colors?

We tried to choose colors that would stand out on the shelves, so we did a little inventory of the colors most used in beer brands and tried to avoid those. Of course, it’s not an exact science. But we wanted to use bold colors that we loved. The way we built our brand, black and white are the primary colors, and each beer will get 2 shades of one bold color. It should be pretty versatile down the road.

What were your final reasons for selecting the logo?

When we were clearly communicating one unified idea simply with both our logo and our name, we knew we had arrived.

Thanks again to the guys at Monday Night Brewing for their help with this article! Make sure you check out their website and if you’re ever in the Atlanta area, stop by and brew with them on a Monday night!

Bottles and Cans (Just Clap Your Hands)

When I sat down to write this article, I wanted to create a cost/benefit analysis of cans vs. bottles and make a recommendation as to which packaging was best. Then I realized how boring a detailed analysis of this issue sounds and found out that this same article has been written before many times on many different websites. If this is the article you’re looking for, then here are some great links that explain this debate better than I ever could.

Sustainability issues

Ecoguides to bottles and cans

An interesting look at a controversy involving Oskar Blues (cans) vs. Boston Beer Company (bottles)

The obligatory ‘big media outlet’ covering this issue

I’ve taken notes and condensed only the most important facts into this nifty chart for your convenience:

Bottles are sexier. Cans offer more flexibility. Many myths about cans are unfounded and their perception is slowly changing. This issue comes down to a matter of personal preference on the part of the consumer and the brewer. My final suggestion? Nothing substitutes going to the brewery and getting your beer on tap.

Pricing for Perception

How do your perceptions influence the beers you buy? Think about the beers you feel are of the highest quality. What creates our perception of quality in a craft beer? Do we rely solely on the taste of the beer? Could it also be based on the ingredients used?  Does the brewing location influence your perception of quality?  How about labeling, packaging and nomenclature? Does this influence perception of quality? If this beer were introduced nearly twenty years ago like this,  would it have been as successful? How has your perception on the quality of canned beers changed? All of these factors certainly play a role in sculpting our perceptions, however, one other factor most influences how we feel about the quality of a product – price.

How much do you think the price of the beer influences consumer perception of quality? How do you perceive Keystone Light compared to Sam Adams Utopias? A bottle of Utopias cost more than a keg of Key Light. Of course, much more goes into the quality disparity between these two beers than just the price, but if you had never tasted or seen either, how would you perceive the quality based on their price points alone? Of course this is an extreme example, but let’s take a look at a scientific study on this phenomenon conducted at Caltech and Stanford University.

“According to researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology, if a person is told he or she is tasting two different wines—and that one costs $5 and the other $45 when they are, in fact, the same wine—the part of the brain that experiences pleasure will become more active when the drinker thinks he or she is enjoying the more expensive vintage…

The participants said they could taste five different wines, even though there were only three, and added that the wines identified as more expensive tasted better. The researchers found that an increase in the perceived price of a wine did lead to increased activity in the mOFC because of an associated increase in taste expectation.”

The researchers recruited 11 male Caltech graduate students who said they liked and occasionally drank red wine. The subjects were told that they would be trying five different Cabernet Sauvignons, identified by price, to study the effect of sampling time on flavor. In fact, only three wines were used—two were given twice. The first wine was identified by its real bottle price of $5 and by a fake $45 price tag. The second wine was marked with its actual $90 price and by a fictitious $10 tag. The third wine, which was used to distract the participants, was marked with its correct $35 price. A tasteless water was also given in between wine samples to rinse the subjects’ mouths. The wines were given in random order, and the students were asked to focus on flavor and how much they enjoyed each sample.

These test participants perceived greater quality in the EXACT SAME WINE when they were told it was a different bottle with a higher price!

Does giving wine a fake, inflated price change the contents of the bottle? Of course not. Does it make us perceive a better taste? According to this study, yes it does. Although the actual taste of the wine did not change, the perceptions in our brains can alter the way we taste the wine. Can we say that the results of this study would be any different with beer? I don’t think so.

In the craft beer industry we have the luxury of relative parity in price levels when compared to our wine drinking counterparts. Most craft beer six packs are within a $5 price range of $8 – $13. While there are a select few (and some absurdly expensive) exceptions to this rule, this is a much smaller window than the wine drinkers have. This pricing has kept a lot of the pretention and elitism that run amok in the wine industry out of craft brewing, yet it has still provided enough room for breweries to take advantage of higher prices to generate this perceived quality.

However, I want to make one thing clear – artificial inflation of a beer price alone will not lead to greater perceived quality. If this were the case, all breweries would keep raising their beer prices to generate false perception of quality until beer became unaffordable (the last thing I want). In order to work, raising prices has to be used in small amounts, only when appropriate, and must be used in conjunction with other perception enhancers. Let’s take a look at each of these:

Small Amounts

If a brewery decided it wanted to have greater quality perception for their current offerings and decided to raise the price of all their six packs from $8.50 to $12.50, they’ve just put themselves out of business. They might attract a handful of new consumers who’ve never heard of the brewery before but they have also successfully alienated their loyal customer base. Also, if every brewery engaged in this pricing with each of their beers, craft beer would become unaffordable to the average beer drinker and they’d start looking for substitute products.

Only When Appropriate

As mentioned in the last section, a brewery can’t increase the price of a current product and expect an increase in quality perception. So when is it appropriate to choose a higher price point?

When introducing a new beer.

Without a loyal fan base that expects a certain price, new products can be priced as a premium addition to the product line.

In Conjunction with Other Perception Enhancers

The pricing strategy must be used in conjunction with other elements that enhance consumer perception of quality. In other words, what makes this beer worth the price? Showing the consumer why the beer is worth the money doesn’t have to cost the brewery more money, but it does need to offer the consumer something different from the current offerings – a limited edition sixpack, a new name and logo that denotes specialty, or an eye catching bomber bottle. When rolled out together, pricing and image have a strong effect on consumer quality perception.

My goal isn’t to artificially drive up beer prices or to make sure every brewery has a premium offering. In fact, if every brewery is doing this, it is no longer unique. We have seen this in the wine industry and it is probably one of the reasons many of us aren’t wine connoisseurs. Instead, my goal is to better understand how our perceptions influence our choices when purchasing beer and pricing is a good starting point for this discussion.

Sharing the Love

Beer tasting as a hobby has grown up with the craft beer industry and it has become ubiquitous with a visit to a brewery. You can now also get taster trays at certain beer oriented restaurants. This concept has been taken a step further with people hosting beer tasting parties at their homes.

Breweries want to encourage these tasting parties – the whole idea here (from a brewery perspective) is to have consumers share the beer with their friends and family. This leads to a unique opportunity for breweries: Build beer tasting guides right into the packaging.

Breweries should include a step-by-step guide to tasting beer somewhere in the packaging. This could be as simple as including a small takeaway tasting guide in each pack. Additionally, include MULTIPLE notes/ratings pages with the usual categories (body, aroma, etc.)

This builds communication right into the product and encourages the consumer to share. Putting this aspect into the packaging makes sharing extremely easy for the consumer. Ideally this would be integrated into sampler packs such as New Belgium’s Folly Pack to allow the consumer to taste and share different types of beer.

If the brewery makes it easy for the customer to share, they will.