Carbo-load Your Creativity
How craft breweries and artisan doughnut shops are taking on corporate America… and winning.
Create. Destroy.
Some entrepreneurs create their markets.
Others, look at the market and see what they can create.
In my last two road trips, it has been hard to ignore the craft beer and doughnut phenomena. Wherever there’s a bearded hipster sipping IPA, or a blogging foodie eating bacon-covered spongy goodness, one thing is for sure: it’s pure marketing.
Said differently: If you are selling beer, then you are competing with huge corporations. If you are selling doughnuts, you compete with, well, everyone selling doughnuts (and every bakery and cafe for that matter). The solution is simple. Don’t sell beer, sell the story of craft, being local, or your unique brewing process.
Don’t sell doughnuts, sell unique flavor combinations with really cool names and tie it in with a kick ass logo and packaging. If you’ve read about the “Long Tail” or can tolerate yet another reference to Intuit’s Future of Small Business, the rules of business are being challenged. What does this mean for you and other entrepreneurs?
Craftspeople — with passion and unique skills to bear on the market, decent graphic design chops, and some inventive marketing ideas — are grabbing market share and revenue from the big guys.
The good news is that we all win.
Well, if a cream cheese and salmon doughnut (you read that right) chased with a cold beer means #winning, then call me Charlie Sheen.
Marketing for connection is the killer app
As a person who has spent their career marketing consumer products, nothing brings me more joy than reading about a huge multi-national corporation like Inbev, with global sales around $15.1 billion, struggling to figure out how to compete with microbreweries and their quick-to-market names, strategies and tactics.
You know, those little hole in the wall joints with clever or regional names like Larry Bird Haircut (Cambridge, MA), Terry Porter (named after NBA point guard via local Portland brewer Hopworks), and my personal favorite from Ontario, Dirtbag McQuaig’s Malt Liquor For Fine Gentlemen, all tell an authentic story about creating beer culture at the local level.
The irony of Budweiser advertising “beechwood aged” for years, is counterintuitive to the “inch-wide mile-deep” brewery nerds. Take Billy Broas’ HomeBrewAcademy.com, which posts videos and blogs about the intricacies of home brewing ideas, teaching the amateur beer maker how to make, say, “Extra Malty Oatmeal Stout.” Lesson here is that while the big guys hammer us with language that we’ve heard ad-nauseum (pun intended), we are turned off to it while the real engagement happens digitally.
Therein lies the difference people.
Engagement.
Connection.
Community.
This is 21st century brand building.
What happens when old marketing doesn’t work
According to Budweiser’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, 44% of 21–27 year old drinkers today have never tried Budweiser.
Mark Hyatt, one of the co-owners of Rincon Brewery, located in Carpinteria, California, explains, “Younger Millennial generation drinkers are going to be the next large segment of the growing craft beer demographic. These people have never known a market without a great selection of craft beers, and will continue to experiment and seek out new brands and flavors. Gone are the days of a “one-beer brand” consumer, sticking to one of the Big 3 breweries. Today’s craft beer consumer, especially younger consumers, are all about choice and variety, and will continue to look to the craft industry to see what is fresh.”
It’s only a matter of time until under-age kids hang outside liquor stores asking strangers to score them some “organic honey wheat ale…and make sure it’s not too hoppy!” Wasn’t too long ago you’d scream “Bud!” as an easy “call out” in a noisy bar. Those days are apparently long gone, and according to Beer Marketer’s Insights, Bud’s market share has dropped from 14.4% ten years ago to 7.6% today.
Even as Bud tries to reinvent itself, the smell of desperation is stronger than the fragrance of the Axe-deodorant-wearing frat dudes who ignore them. If you watched the television ads over Super Bowl 2015 weekend, Bud launched a misguided ad campaign celebrating their dominance as a “macro brew.” Bud and their NYC-based marketing agency Anomaly, clearly forget to ask the agency interns to check YouTube, because Wieden+Kennedy cracked this nut in the late 1990’s with the same positioning and SAME tagline. A true “WTF” moment for a large brand that is disconnected from both consumer and market. From the February 1, 2015 edition of Ad Age:
The “macro beer” phrase is an attempt to reframe the “prevailing discourse in a lot of industries, and certainly in beer, that small must be good and big must be bad,” Budweiser VP Brian Perkins said. “I don’t think anyone has really talked about macro beer before with pride.” Bud, he said, wants to own that phrase.
Declining market share. Check.
Regional craft breweries opening up in your backyard of St. Louis, MO. Yup.
Recycling an ad campaign from 15 years ago that your competition once used. Done.
Entrepreneurs take note because each little failure steepens the slippery slope that many large brands are on, leaving the market wide open to those who understand conscious consumerism.
This is more than a chink in the armor — it’s a hole big enough for Beastmode to run through.
Local marketing is global marketing
Entrepreneurs need to identify (and connect with) consumer trends to exploit the holes in the market the big guys just don’t care about or cannot identify as a business opportunity.
With all the consolidation at the top (Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors) and the interest in the local food movement, this all begins to make perfect sense. While Baby Boomers and Gen X consumers grew up to believe that “big was good,” shifting tastes in the younger and growing market segments suggest otherwise. “Buy Local,” the bumper stickers once only adoring beater Subaru wagons, now resonate with an entire generation of consumers who sense the importance of a local food economy and keeping the dollars local.
Brian Thompson is the Founder of Telegraph Brewery in Santa Barbara. He took a ‘local’ idea, and with some PR help, made national news: “One of the best marketing moves we’ve made recently was releasing a beer in collaboration with a Santa Barbara-based indie rock band called Buellton. We released the band’s new record as a bottle of beer: each bottle had the track list on the label and a download code for a digital copy of the record. It got us coverage in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, several national music magazines, and lots of local Southern California media. Small companies run by real people with interesting stories have an advantage over big, faceless international conglomerates because there is a generational backlash against corporate America. Small companies are real and resonate with consumers. A beer nerd can see themselves at a small, local brewery, and they want to support that person and that business.”
Can I get an “amen?”
If you don’t tune-in to Gary Vaynerchuck’s podcast, start. Technology is the electricity that runs any entrepreneurs marketing, and is once again, the great equalizer.
In “Ask GaryVee Episode #65” he echoes Brian Thompson’s point about connection. I love Vaynerchuck’s style and how he breaks it down into simple chunks:
- Win locally
- Create relationships
- Storytell on social media, specifically Instagram, driven by Facebook darkposts.
Shift Happens
Beer reflects one shift in our foodie curiosity. Back in the 90’s, there was a TCBY on every corner — now it’s 2x the price and called Pinkberry. Starbucks may have “made” coffee legitimate, but the “third wave” guys (Intelligentsia, Stumptown, Blue Bottle) redefined it, told us stories about farmers and growers, and connected us to the source. Shifts like these not only make us aware of what’s ‘behind’ our food source, it causes us to question what we are willing to pay for things as well as ‘tolerate’ the companies we support (right Monsanto?).
Mmmmm, doughnuts…
But there is one food trend that has defied the test of time. Nuclear war, freak asteroid shower, or alien invasion, even in our final moments, there will most certainly be a line at your local doughnut shop. You can count on it.
Mark Hyatt from Rincon Brewery in Carpinteria, California, points out the simple notion of being engaged in the market. As a beer marketer, he distils an important notion that being a successful entrepreneur means being connected to your market. That applies to any commodity product — beer, doughnuts, coffee, burgers (and I would include life coaching and information product marketing). You better “bring it” so your unique character can be felt (and tasted) in the market.
Mark explains that “as a craft brewery, we have the ability to continually experiment, explore and improve our beers. As tastes change, so can our recipes. Creativity and experimentation have been a hallmark of this industry, and a driving force behind craft beer’s growth. In contrast, the big guys are stuck, producing the same product, with no real room for improvement, their focus is on consistency, and creating a product that on a national average, always tastes the same.”
But we’re talking doughnuts here, so let’s stay on topic. In craft beer-centric Portland Oregon, yet another hipster movement has emerged in the shape of a doughnut.
Voodoo Doughnuts is an experience unlike anything I have ever seen.
Doughnuts with names such as Maple Blazer Blunt (inspired by the Trailblazer’s history of enjoying local plant life), Kelly’s Jelly (locally made jelly), and the Rappers Delight (just go to the website to enjoy this description) are just one reason the line is around the corner. If you’re an entrepreneur and need a jolt of creativity (while mainlining mass quantities of sugar) visit their retail store, or scope the website to see how you can fully embody what marketers mean when they talk USP (unique selling proposition).
Defining your USP is marketing nirvana. No one has brought this marketing concept to life better than my new favorite doughnut shop in the downtown area of Las Vegas. O Face Doughnuts wins in every category imaginable. They take their name from one of my favorite movies of all time (“Office Space” for the uninitiated, YouTube can direct you), the graphics package and retail execution live in perfect harmony, and the staff is warm and friendly.
But the killer? Pizza Doughnuts, Salmon and Cream Cheese Doughnuts, and my go-to, Root Beer. Root Beer friggin’ doughnuts. (Yes!) Oh, and pear gorgonzola with caramel glaze.
For realz. That’s not some robot dunking dough into the fryer, it’s a culinary school graduate who trained with Wolfgang Puck. Since I visited Voodoo at 2:00 A.M., it was hard to get a sense of the staff, but with O Face, the people who worked there were straight out of 1950’s central casting with beehive hair and engaging friendly smiles.
Owner Sonny Ahuja shared with me that he traveled across the United States taste-testing dozens of doughnut shops as a “food entrepreneur” trying to identify the proper “retro doughnut feel that would highlight (his) artisan approach” to his brand. It’s throwback in its look and feel, but also in the approach. Sonny explains, “I define success in the team I have built and in the act of creating. Learning, design, execution. When my team is happy I am happy.” A happiness brand strategy. Pinch me.
You can scale being original and authentic
Does your product offering reflect the unique personality of your company?
Are you selling products undifferentiated from your competition?
Is your personal brand connecting with your customer base?
Somehow, doughnut shops and craft beer have become the blank canvas for artisan foodies with a sense of humor (Voodoo Doll Chocolate Doughnut has an edible stake through its heart) or a burning passion to create — and all entrepreneurs should look at them as a means of experimentation and marketing excellence.
The recipe looks like this:
Great name + great graphics + great product = success
Sound familiar? Of course, because it applies to everything.
Clearly, standing over large stainless steel containers brewing hops has given Telegraph’s Brian Thompson time to consider what is happening with entrepreneurs at all levels. Thompson explains, “Younger consumers today want desperately to be unique, to associate themselves with brands that their friends may not know about yet, or esoteric products that send a message to other people about the choices they are making in life.”
In essence, humans are hard-wired to seek meaning in our life, our relationships, and we do so through the products we purchase. As entrepreneurs, it’s your job to remember that you must attach meaning to the problems you solve in the market.
Align yourself with a local artist or musician and push messaging to both of your lists. Whether it’s a Kanye West and Adidas collaboration, Kelly’s Jelly finding their way into the center of a Voodoo doughnut, or collaborating with social media brands to increase your business, its all about making art and money at the same time.
Reinforce to your team that their happiness is part of the reason why people want to eat your Root Beer Doughnuts. Your food will taste better.
Stay close to the market and develop ideas that the big guys can’t — iterate and innovate.
Or else, “this Bud’s for you.”
