Josh Emrich, of branding agency Emrich Office, has helped a number of successful brands (including Uinta, Speakeasy, Grimm Brothers, Bottle Logic, and Copper Kettle) find their voice, and in his experience, the hard work is balancing the need for the brand to be easily understood as craft beer with the need for each brand to stand out and differentiate itself from its local, regional, and national competition.
At a previous firm, Emrich enjoyed watching how crisis-management public-relations firms dealt with preparing clients for difficult circumstances, working through the most challenging questions they would be asked. “Brands that aren’t willing to ask themselves the really hard questions are the ones that will fail,” says Emrich. Here are five questions that every craft-beer brand should ask before undertaking the process of branding and building a beer business—as well as some basic cost ranges for brand development based on numbers provided to us by experienced and successful design firms.
Five Questions That Every Brewery Brand Should Ask
Why would someone buy your beer instead of someone else’s beer, and would you buy it if you were a consumer?
If you can’t answer a consumer’s question honestly and in a compelling way, then how can you ask them to buy your beer?