New Belgium Brewing
Developing a brand personality
Gift
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Chang
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Van
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Steve
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Martin
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Tommy
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BACKGROUND
•
The New Belgium Brewing Company (NBB) was
founded in 1991 in Fort Collins, Colorado (United States)
by the husband-and-wife team of Jeff Lebesch and Kim
Jordan.
•
The environmentally-friendly firm uses wind-generated
electricity as well as heat and energy derived from
byproducts of the brewing process.
•
Founders Kim Jordan and Jeff Lebesch hold controlling
interest in the company, which is partly owned by their
employees.
•
The brewery currently produces about 330,000 barrels of
beer annually, or 13,000 cases and 1,310 kegs daily.
DISTRIBUTION
•
Before 2006, New Belgium distributed in only 15 states (Washington, Oregon,
Idaho, Montana, Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, Nebraska,
Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Colorado).
•
In Spring 2006, the brewery began to distribute some of their beers in other
markets. i.e. bottles of Fat Tire distributed in Chicago claim "Chicago Inaugural:
The 1st Fat Tire Ale served (legally) in the second city."
•
In June of 2007 Fat Tire, Skinny Dip (New Belgium's Summer seasonal), 1554 and
Mother ship Organic Wit became available in Illinois in 6 packs of 12 ounce
bottles.
•
By the summer of 2007, New Belgium expanded distribution again to include select
areas of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Minnesota metro area and Iowa.
•
As of July 2008, Fat Tire is also served in Tennessee.
Company Core Values and Beliefs
•
•
New Belgium Brewing Purpose Statement: To operate a profitable brewery
which makes our love and talent manifest.
Company Core Values and Beliefs:
– Remembering that we are incredibly lucky to create something fine that
enhances people's lives while surpassing our consumers' expectations.
– Producing world-class beers.
– Promoting beer culture and the responsible enjoyment of beer.
– Kindling social, environmental and cultural change as a business role
model.
– Environmental stewardship: Honoring nature at every turn of the business.
– Cultivating potential through learning, high involvement culture, and the
pursuit of opportunities.
– Balancing the myriad needs of the company, our coworkers and their
families.
– Trusting each other and committing to authentic relationships and
communications.
– Continuous, innovative quality and efficiency improvements.
– Having Fun.
•
•
•
•
•
Group of people that were
– very entrepreneurial
– extremely idealistic
– risk tolerant
– Young
– comparatively high-level of education
Social Responsibility and Sustainable Business Practices were critical from
day 1 and are to the present day
Philanthropy - Donate $1.00 per barrel of beer produced to charity
NBB was green before green was black - A deep commitment to engage in
sustainable business practices before "being green" was "in." Sustainable
business practices are the right things to do; the founders developed a
powerful vision that they successfully communicated - They wanted to create
a business model to prove to others that it works.
NBB was successful because of sustainable business practices; they were
NOT established and maintained to prop up advertising and the bottom line
only after it became the in-thing.
Company Perspectives
Long before New Belgium had a marketing
department, it was just Kim and Jeff traveling to
festivals, sampling out beers and talking to
folks. These days it's the same idea but a little
further flung. Now we have Beer Rangers who
travel throughout the west talking to people,
hosting events, and generally ensuring that all
our beers are top quality from the draft line to
your glass
Event
• Tour de Fat
Tour de Fat is an annual pro-bike tour sponsored by New
Belgium. The events, which take place in various large
cities around the West, include music, New Belgium
beer, circus-type performances, bicycle dance troupes,
and the main event: a giant group bike ride/parade where
everyone dresses up in costumes and rides through town.
One huge part of the event is a bike trade, in which a
local participant transfers the keys and title to their
vehicle to New Belgium, in exchange for a new
commuter bike and trailer in order to promote bike riding
and sustainability.
Marketing strategy
• Thrived on word-of-mouth communication
• Consisted of traveling to beer festival and handing out free
samples.
• Relational marketing launched the advent of its Ranger
Team
• Using communicating tools as: events, sponsorships,
interactive game, coupled with print media alternative
weeklies.
Brand Building
• As per BNET Business Dictionary, Brand-building is the
establishment and improvement of a brand’s identity,
including giving the brand a set of values that the consumer
wants, recognizes, identifies with, and trusts.
• Values developed in the process of brand-building include
psychological, physical and functional properties that
consumers desire and should always identify a property that
is unique to that brand.
• New Belgium Brewing brand building using advertising and
Public Relations have shown the uniqueness of its product
and their positioning beyond the competition
Brand building
• A brand manifesto describing the brand’s attributes,
character, cultural relevance and potential was created and
hired Amalgamated Inc. as the company’s advertising
agency. Amalgamated Inc., created a television campaign
‘Follow Your Folly… ours is Beer’ campaign featuring a
character ‘Tinkerer.’ However, New Belgium Brewing
Company stuck to its old style of brand-building as well.
• New Belgium Brewing Company’s staff was involved in
testing the storyboards, how different locations were
explored to shoot the film and how music director and model
were selected.
The change of logo
• In 2006 NBB changed its logo. They did so because the
company realized that beer drinkers could identify the
Fat Tire label, but "didn't recognize the brewery label, or
make the connection that New Belgium brewed Fat Tire
and other best-selling brands, such as Sunshine Wheat.
• " The company's new logo "pays homage to the wellknown Fat Tire brand bicycle" drawn by Anne Fitch.
‘Public Relations’ in creating
successful brand building
• Public relations would be the most cost effective tool for
brand-building when compared to other forms and could be
used for any kind of company irrespective of its size and
ability to spend huge money on brand-building.
• PR is most effective when it comes to brand affinity and brand
sustenance, brand credibility, building trust, and building on
the marketing framework. PR does the buzz in getting the ball
rolling and PR along with other marketing efforts work
together to develop innovative promotional materials and
cutting edge website etc.
National
Public
Radio
Television
With a restrictive budget,
television is the preferred
option
Mix
Theatrical
screenings
Radio
Shorts
Advantage
• Low cost per viewer
• Wide reach
• Where consumers
expected to see advertising
interwoven with
entertainment
→closer approach to
customer
Disadvantage
• The “Big Three” : AnheuserBush, Coors and Miller – have long
dominated mainstream televised
beer advertising in the U.S.
• Boston Brewing’s foray into
television several years
→ Large challenges
Message Development
• The idea was to introduce NBB to a larger costumers. The
company was trying to deliver a message to the costumers who
are outside their traditional distribution line.
• Basically they are trying to deliver a mind set where a highly
creative activity or avocation is pursued for the intrinsic value of
doing it, as well as performed in a balanced manner with nature.
Message Development
“Follow Your folly…Ours Is Beer “
• This is taken from the personal experience of the
founder Jeff Lebesch who was an electrical engineer
but was also a home brewer. He later left his job and
pursued his hobby of brewing the newly found
Belgian style recipe during his bike ride in Belgium.
• The main idea was to pursue the things that people
like to do (like hobbies) while still coping with every
day necessity of working and provide the needs for
living.
Message Development
Message development
• Advertising Campaign:
i. Involving the local talent and crew from Colorado communities
ii. Quickly took on a collaborative and improvisational feel reflecting
NBB’s culture
iii. Using musical instrumental, from every genres to deliver the
message, seems ubiquitous mainstream beer advertising
iv. NBB employees committed to work, they care about the product,
about costs, and about each other
v. New medium for wider audience, but still hold on the root-style
marketing, build the brand in the same authentic and personal tone
they had come to know and embrace.
vi. Television ads can reach far away outposts where Ranger sales
staff penetration was difficult and not cost effective.
Culture and NBB
•
Paradigm Shift - Transition from a very reactionary,
in the moment posture to a proactive posture
regarding brand building.
Typical Cultural Issues
• Security
– We trust everyone, people are
good
• Don’t start acting like a “suit”
– We don’t want policies and
rules
• My job is making the beer the
best, forget the rest
– Nothing bad has happened, this
isn’t NY
Deliver the message correctly
• The basic proportion of beer has to be about fun
• The first television based advertising approached with a
great deal of inner reflection-in a sea of loud flashy beer
advertising aimed seemingly at a youthful demographic.
• Brand building efforts led to positioning the company as a
whimsical, thoughtful and reflective.
• Message of environment awareness issue as NBB concerned
of recycle and reuse materials.
• NBB chose a very traditional medium where ads are
acceptable and the rare good ones can still be
groundbreaking, thoughtful and effective.
Conclusion
• NBB has developed their brand personality through the
advertising and public relations in their brand building efforts.
• The brand building itself has been developed its unique
personality beyond the customers mind.
• The internal strategy of employee owned can put differentiate in
developing their brand personality because employer are more
encouraged to work harder and also making it possible for cultural
approach in each locals, because the ideas came from themselves.
• In delivering message, we should focus on the target market,
considering acceptance and the channel that we choose to deliver
it in order to get the real function of it.a
Key factors for competitive success
in the industry
• Awards from Business Ethics magazine and Better Business Bureau’s
Torch Award for their socially responsible business.
• Commitment to the environment, society and personal relationship with
consumers.
• Consumers believe in and feel good about this product.
• Loyal beer drinking consumers.
• Their core values and beliefs are to be environmentally concerned and
socially responsible brewers.
• The employee loyalty programs are unmatched by any other
craft/micro-breweries.
• Their commitment to the environment and social concerns.
• Culture must always be addressed before embarking on a key initiative.
Question number 1
Rather than testing its television spots using focus groups,
New Belgium Brewing Company instead tested these spots
using insiders in the bike community and brewery friends
who had a personal history and knowledge of the brand.
Evaluate NBB's decision not to use focus groups.
Answer:
• This was to maintain the already
established bonds between NBB and its
older (mature) market. In doing this they
would gain feedback from individuals
who are very familiar with their
products, and thus redoubling the
personal touch in the mature market.
Question number 2
Advertising objectives:
Restrictive budget
Reflect the company manifesto and the mountain local lifestyle
The using the 16 millimeter film and Freak Folk music
• Amalgamated created a $10 million (less than the 70-milimeter sheen)
advertising campaign for New Belgium.
• The grainy ads focus on a man rebuilding a cruiser bike out of used
parts and then riding it along pastoral country roads.
• The product appears in just five seconds of each ad between the tag
lines, “Follow Your Folly … Ours Is Beer.” The ads helped position the
growing brand as whimsical, thoughtful, and reflective.
• The Freak Folk music (Banhart’s acoustic tune) brings the haunting
sense of cheerful nostalgia to the works.
What are some of the benefits of New Belgium’s decision to
redouble its roots based, personal touch marketing efforts aimed at
its mature markets?
Benefits:
• The roots-based of NBB is: the inner reflection.
This is showed or implied in NBB’s promotion
or public relation activities, such as: NBB
launched an educational “Beerstream” ,
introduced signature NBB events as the multicity
philanthropic bike festival, Tour de Fat, …
• Redoubling its roots-based, Personal touch
marketing efforts aimed at its mature markets
will bring some of benefits:
– Improving customer awareness to the brand
– Strengthening brand image
– Making the Differentiation
– Cost effective
– Resource effective
– More focused objective
Question 4: The roles of advertising agency, NBB’s
leadership, NBB’s employees in the development of the
advertising campaign
Advertising agency
NBB’s leadership
NBB’s employees
• Amalgamated Inc. explored a
wide breadth of possibilities
within a restrictive budget.
• Jason developed a series of
storyboards for the commercial
featuring the “Tinkerer”.
• Amalgamated flew to NBB in
order to present “Tinkerer” ‘s
material at the company’s
meeting.
• They also suggested tag line:
“Follow Your Folly… Ours Is
Beer.” - an idea for NBB’s
advertising campaign.
• During conducting this
advertising campaign, they
always helped NBB too much,
i.e. searching for right
director…
• They were really both good at
choosing advertising strategy
and managing NBB and
advertising campaign.
• NBB team reacted positively
to Amalgamated’s suggested
tagline and send a healthy
volley of e-mails to distribute
their opinions to the
campaign’s tagline.
• They also understood
customer’s lifestyle and knew
how to take advantage of
television spots
• So as to embrace the latent
talents of their own crew, they
allowed brewery employees to
compose a reggaelike score.
• They were pleased to go to
Hotchkiss and commenced
shooting over 3 days to
complete production.
Question 5: The agonized of ‘’folly’’
• Because folly had too negative a connotation or
undermined the science and technology it took to
produce such consistently high-quality beers. The
word ‘’folly’’ had fallen so far from the vernacular that
it was ripe for reinterpretation and a fresh new
definition. Following one’s folly also aptly alluded to
the ideal of offbeat endeavors versus the traditional
‘’follow the money’’ thinking that created the social
tensions inherent to potential consumers’ lives.
• We feel that this word is a symbol of only follower not
to become an opener or innovator, so it is not good in
the advertising, doesn’t show a good remarks on the
product itself.