A piece written initially for the Robot Food journal, here. You can view the full case study for Badger Brewery, here.

A few years ago, we were approached by a brewery. There’s nothing new there, we get approached by breweries quite a lot. But what stood out at the time was their ask — a redesign of just one of their best known ales. 

Now, at Robot Food, our ethos is ‘Challenge by design’. And for us, that’s not just some hollow agency tag-line or statement, it’s something we take seriously and try to live by. And on this occasion, quite simply, we thought the brief was wrong and the opportunity for the client was bigger than they realised.

Their portfolio was hugely fragmented. Consumers knew their beers, but the brand awareness was low — putting a clear ceiling on their ambitions. And focusing on marketing their beers as individual brands was stopping them from leveraging all the great stuff about the brand and brewery that wasn’t tied directly to the beer. This was not an agency opinion, spouted to increase the scope of the job — these were cold hard facts, born from extensive research. So we laid out the challenges — and the opportunity.

‘You shouldn’t redesign this one beer. You should look at your whole portfolio and how it works together. There’s an opportunity to build that brand recognition, tell your story better, and get consumers buying more of your beers on more occasions’.

‘No thanks’, they said. ‘That’s not the way we work. We just want this one beer looked at, so we’ll work with someone else’.

‘Fair enough’, we thought.

So what’s the point in this story? 

Well, just because a client doesn’t go for it, doesn’t mean you’re wrong. 

Not long after, Badger Brewery came to us with a very similar problem. Their market share was declining, alongside bottled ales as a whole. Consumers recognised beers (like the wonderful Golden Champion or Fursty Ferret), but not the Badger brand. They were struggling to tell their story, and give new consumers a reason to buy into Badger in a market with so much choice. Only this time, nothing was off the table. 

We unified the brand under a bigger, bolder masthead. We gave them the space and opportunity to tell their stories. Not just of the beers, but of the brewery itself. We made it way easier for consumers to recognize a Badger beer, and shop across Badger’s portfolio of beers — without sacrificing any of the individuality of the beers themselves. We gave consumers a reason to buy in.

The results? 

Well, they speak for themselves. A 50% sales increase year-on-year, since the relaunch. More frequent purchasers, larger purchasers, and new drinkers choosing the brand. 

The lesson? 

Your brand is everything. And just because that’s not the way things have been done before, that doesn’t mean it can’t be the way things are done in the future. Brands need to challenge to survive. That means challenging their competitors, challenging the category, and ultimately, challenging themselves.