After a quarter century, after pioneering a beer area that is now known around the globe, and after introducing a region to new styles and recipes, the folks at Highland Brewing Co. realized that even though things were still going okay, maybe it was time to see if they could do something new and better.
“We were getting different streams of input. Some were gentle nudges from industry friends, such as ‘Have you thought about refreshing?’ And then there were the more important pieces, the internal conversations we were having,” says brewery President Leah Wong Ashburn. “The company had changed; people had changed. There was a lot of excitement about who we could become, and we couldn’t become that if we looked and felt the same as we did in 1994.”
The path to Highland’s “refresh” of its look, its beers, and the way it communicated its ethos to customers was not a quick one. It involved years of thought, planning, execution, “and a lot of money,” says Ashburn.